HD Locals: Columbus, OH

FOX WTTE 28 audio issues HORRIBLE the last 2-3 weeks, maybe longer?

recording of Fringe and Bones on 10/8 were almost unwatchable, I tuned to the channel live on Friday morning and Jerry Spring was terrible, I called the local engineer first and he said that the "receiver at the local pop needed to be remoted into and rebooted" (his words exactly) and that it was a D* issue, not a local issue, it had to do with this local receiver and the OTA signal that D* gets from WTTE 28 FOX.

I called D* and the CS I got on the phone made me troubleshoot and when the problem wasn't resolved she said she would send me a new HD-DVR which I explained to her wasn't the problem and went back over what the local engineer had told me. She then said there was nothing she could do for me and hung up when I asked for a supervisor. I called back and got another lady who I remember was named Deb in Kansas I believe, she was very helpful and took great interest in the detail in which I explained what the local engineer told me and what needed to be done to fix the problem, she told me that the issue would get escalated to the N.E.T. team and they would fix the problem. I spoke with her at length and she assured me that they would handle the problem. I watched some shows on Fri and Sat and it seemed ok. Sunday I actually get to see my 49ers play and guess what....audio problems, popping, skipping, out of sync just like the previous day, another call into CS and got a gentleman who also agreed to send the issue to the NET team and assured me it would be taken care of. At one point during the game I actually lost audio and video for a couple of seconds then when it came back on the audio seemed ok the rest of the game. Monday night watching House and it seemed ok still. Fast forward to Thursday night, Bones and Fringe again had some popping issues but nothing really horrible, at some point during Bones there were times when the full screen HD went to a letterbox and sidebar small version with no audio problems then when it went back to full screen HD it would pop and stutter again, but nothing as bad as it was previous week.

Trying to watch the ALCS tonight and it is horrible again, lagging audio, many pops, stutters, skips and outright loss of audio for a couple of seconds. Another call to CS and another report sent to the NET team yet I never hear from the NET team or when the issue is going to be resolved.

I have friends in the local area who also are having the problems and one of them even got suckered into getting a service call to have his dish aligned which obviously didn't solve the problem for him.

I only know what I have done which is at least 3 calls on my own to D* as well as a call to engineering at WTTE who told me it was a D* issue.

You cannot get in touch with anyone higher than a regular CS agent or their supervisor when you call into D*. Agents have told me they are submitting help tickets to the NET or N.E.T. team (I believe that it stands for Networking Something Team) but the NET team won't actually call you back and you have to call back into regular CS and see if the NET team has posted any notes on any issues they found or corrected in the problem area.


Local WTTE FOX 28 engineer told me that it was the local receiver that D* uses needs to be reset and it is only the HD feed, if you are OTA, SD or using Time Warner or any other providers your HD feed is probably ok.