VOOM Installations

[FredOh]

Three installations attempts better be the charm

No install yet. Here is my saga. SIgned up online three weeks ago. Had first install scheduled for Last Saturday, July 17, 8-12 am. Sent a few emails prior to the day and got no response. Installer doesn't show, and after numerous phone calls to HYTECs main number, he calls and says theres a 90% chance he won't make it to my house that day. Never got a returned call from HYTEC. This was at 1:00PM. I get a $40 credit to my VOOM account for my trouble, and reschedule for Saturday 24th, 8-12 am. Same installer as last Saturday, calls me at 9:00 am saying he won't make it till 1:00 PM. At 2:00 PM, I call his cell phone and get voice mail. At 2:45PM I call his phone and leave harsh message about Customer service and the fact I've devoted two Saturdays to this guy. I call 800 get voom at 3:00PM. Some guy with HYTEC, the installer, calls me and says the installer will make it that day. Installer calls minutes later and says he will be there no matter what, and it would be worth the wait.

At 5:30 PM installer shows up. He surveys my house. I show him my main tv and tell him I need one line fished through a wall, and I would help. He says it $100 to go in attic and $50 to fish. He also says he doesn't have tools for fishing, no fish tape or glow rods. He says none of his customers are willing to pay for fishing. I offer my fish tape, and I'm not an installer. We proceed to the back yard. He says I have no line of sight. He determines this while standing on the ground looking SE. I do have trees but I thought the elevation would be steep enough to clear. He says he know this stuff pretty good, and that the satellite would have to be across the street to get the signal. I tell him forget it. In conversation, he mentions that this is his last day. He's young and doens't seem very experienced. Certainly lacking in basic customer service skills like calling customers to let them know his ETA.

I call GET VOOM. I get the elevation (53 degrees). With a level indicating 53 degrees, and a long broom handle, I determine that LOS is fine from the ground, better from the lowest part of my roof. I tell voom I want another installer to come and check it out before I cancel. They get Installs Inc on the phone and they want $45 if LOS is detemined not to be good. I tell them HYTEC sent an experienced guy on his last day who arrived at 5:30 PM. They tell me to get a second opinion on the LOS from a friend, and call them back and we would work something out.

I've given them almost two complete Saturdays and nothing. Anyone have this experience in South FLA with HYTEC? How'd it get resolved? I'm going to request another attempt from a competent installer. If I'm right, I want $45 from them.

I've asked Wilt for assistance. The problem seems to be HYTEC and this individual installer who luck for Voom had his last day yesterday. Now he can go back to school.

 

[Sean Mota]

FredOh,

Unfortunately, this happens with some local installers. Don't pay for the LOS. Good that you sent an email to Wilt. I am sure he will get this done for you.

 

[FredOh]

It's a shame that a less tolerant person would cancel after day one. I want it so bad I'm willing to put up with alot. I think it really comes down to a handful of individuals who could care less if they do good service or not. I can't imagine running a business that ignore basic business practice and doesn't return emails, phone calls, or give courtesy calls when they are late. It's a greater shame that a pioneering company like Voom has made such poor choices in the front lines with Sears (lack of product knowledge, working displays, not in the top five of most early adopters as a source of new products), and poor installation companies. The people on the phone and the internet employed by VOOM have been top notch. Very responsive, return calls and emails, offer account credits for poor field performance, etc. I hope these areas so they will be around long enough to deliver on the promises.

I hope i only have one more week of Adelphia.

 

[Ken Thompson]

New install in Bakersfield, CA

I had the Voom satellite service installed on the 26th. The installation took about 2 hours and went very smoothly. A separate OTA antenna was included for the local digital channels. The lead installer was very knowledgeable and thorough, but his helper was quite annoying. He kept trying to impress me with his knowledge of home theater, but most of what he tried to tell me I knew to be incorrect.

I was surprised I was able to achieve signal strength of 95 considering the problems I've read about reception on the West Coast. Local channels are coming in at 99. The picture quality on the HD channels is very good, but it doesn't look noticeably better than my digital cable service, which I'm keeping until Voom comes out with a DVR - supposedly later this year. I've been told the best way to compare HD is to watch Jay Leno in HD OTA and then watch it on HD cable/satellite. The OTA broadcast is supposed to be the superior experience due to much higher data transmission rates. I’ll have to try this sometime.

The program guide is a little weak and it only has a about a 24 hour window so you can't see what comes on two or more days in advance. You can check the program guide on Voom's web site for a much larger time frame, however. I won't comment on the quality of the programming since everyone's tastes are different, but I can say that I haven't seen this much HD content anywhere else. I’m sure much of the programming is up converted from standard definition and I don’t know how much of it is in OAR. It will take some checking to determine that, but the service seems impressive so far.

The Motorola box came with version 6 software installed. Local channels were added using the scanning function, which is apparently a new feature with this version. Changing channels is fairly quick and there is only brief pixilation. The stretch function for making 4:3 content fill my 16:9 screen doesn't seem to work on the local channels.

 

[wasch_24]

It's good that all went well. The pillars on the OTA programming are part of the signal. There are very few brands of Set Top Boxes that are able to stretch them. If you have S/W V. 6.0 make sure you leave the box off at night, just hit the power button on the remote, so that you can receive 6.1.

 

[Ken Thompson]

It's good that all went well. The pillars on the OTA programming are part of the signal. There are very few brands of Set Top Boxes that are able to stretch them. If you have S/W V. 6.0 make sure you leave the box off at night, just hit the power button on the remote, so that you can receive 6.1.

I didn't know the verticle pillars were part of the signal. I guess I'll stick to whatching the local channels on my digital cable STB, which does do the stretch, for SD programming.

I had read elsewhere that 6.1 was available, but I was surprised since 6.0 is so new.

 

[zvezman]

New VOOM Customer Observations

Hello to everyone! I have been a VOOM customer since July 28. I have been able to gain a great deal of information from this forum prior to signing up and since activation. I have been on this forum several times daily since finding out about it throught the AVS forum. Thanks to all for the helpful posts. To return the favor for other newbies, I thought I would share my observations and experiences of the first 4 days.

INSTALLATION: I ordered VOOM online Sunday, 25 July. Soonest Saturday option was 7 August, so I took it. Got a call from Metro Tech Solutions (Dallas area) the next day asking if I wanted to move my install date up. Rescheduled for Sat, 31 July. Changed my mind on Tuesday, called them back and rescheduled for Wed 28 July.

Installer showed up as scheduled and was finished by noon. He was not as knowledgeable about VOOM as I would have liked, but he seems to have set the equipment up properly. Got two receivers for my two HDTVs. Both had v 5.68. Metro Tech has 28 installers, and mine said they install both Dish and Direct also, but their volume on VOOM is higher right now. Installer told me not to change channels on the receivers until the next morning, otherwise I would have problems. He didn't know why, just said it would be better. He even asked me what channel I wanted it left on so I could watch something that night. I just let it go, and didn't argue with him.

The OTA antenna he installed is a GS2000A that he attached above the satellite. He ran a single line with diplexors, telling me that the antenna needed it to get its power. I am about 40 miles from the towers, and my house is two story with no obstructions. So far I am receiving all the local digitals just fine with this small antenna, although I'll admit I haven't been watching the local stations much since the install.

FIRST USAGE EXPERIENCES: Of course, I ignored his advice not to change channels. Long story short, the receiver I started playing with locked up pretty quickly, and several times after that. Already knew how to do soft and hard resets, so I was able to get it back up each time. This receiver did not show any program information for several hours.

At some point, I went upstairs and started playing with the other. By this time the upstairs receiver did have the PG info, and seemed somewhat more stable. Eventually though, it too locked up, and required a reboot.

To add to the problems and confusion, we had severe rainstorms in the DFW area that night. So I lost sat reception a lot. I compared against my Direct sat, and it still had reception most of the night, although it too lost it for a bit. In all, somewhat of a frustrating experience, but I was prepared for it from the reading I had done here. I went to bed that night and left both receivers in standby. I did have the feeling, as some here have stated, of being a beta tester for VOOM.

That night both receivers updated to v 6.10. Stayed home to play on Thursday. Had quite a few problems with lock-ups, picture/sound drops outs as discussed here in other threads. My last action was to unplug each receiver, wait a minute, plug them back in, and then leave them alone for about an hour. Since I've done that, I haven't had any more problems. (Keeping fingers crossed.)

USER INTERFACE: I am getting used to it, and there are some things I like about it a lot. I had Dish for years (6000 receiver), but switched to DirectTV when they added the extra HD channels last year. I have 4 Samsung receivers, 2 of them HD. I thought the Samsung interface was a huge improvement over the Dish interface, and the response time and guides were certainly superior. VOOM's interface is as responsive as the Samsung's, and has some things to like. Since the main point of choosing VOOM was HD, I certainly enjoy the HD PG filter option. As others have posted, I can certainly see room for improvement. Several have already made good suggestions. Hopefully, the engineers at VOOM/Motorola are listening.

PICTURE QUALITY/CONTENT: After reading through some of the negative comments on this forum, I think I expected less of VOOM. But I have to say I have been really pleased for the last 3 days with the quality and the content. Having all the available premium movie channels was a big factor in my decision to get VOOM. I've watched quite a few HD movies and really enjoyed the Tyson fight! I know it's only been a few days, but so far I haven't gotten to the point where I can't find something I'd like to watch.

FUTURE: I hope all the rumors of additional satellite capacity, more channels, PVR, and such will turn into reality, and I hope that VOOM's customer base continues to grow rapidly enough to keep them in business. I have tried to do my part by convincing a coworker to join the VOOM ranks while the free install deal was on. She has had an LCD HDTV for at least a year, but was waiting for me to recommend which service to go with. I had been telling her to hold out for DirectTV's PVR, but with the price and the lack of additional HD in the past year, I couldn't recommend it. When I saw the deal for VOOM install and rental, it seemed like a no-brainer to give it a try. So I told her about it and we both pulled the trigger right away.

TECHNICAL QUESTIONS:
1) Having been through the reboot regimen a few times and waiting for the PG info to appear again, it's obvious that VOOM's operational concept is not very efficient or robust when it comes to refreshing the PG. Does anyone know what algorithms the receiver uses to obtain new PG data, and what schedule/frequency the PG data is availalbe from the satellite? If/when I need to reboot again, I'd like to have an understanding of what is going on in this area in order to provide the optimum conditions for rapid, successful PG updates. In my limited experiences so far, it seems that some of the lock-ups are highly correlated to PG dowload/update status and using the system during these events. That would also help explain the installer's advice mentioned earlier, since he is unlikely ever at a customer's location long enough for the PG to have finished its updates.
2) Does VOOM/Motorola have an "official" customer testing program? If so, how does one become a part of it? My intial reaction to the problems was that this firmware could not have been tested very thoroughly. I work as a Systems Engineer at a defense electronics company, have done a lot of hardware/software testing, and am pretty good at finding problems before a customer does. I have extensive experience in defining user interface requirements and integrating hardware/software for some fairly complex airborne systems. There is no part of my job I like better than testing software/hardware and finding bugs, analysing the conditions/steps that cause the bug, and getting it fixed. Makes for a much happier customer when things work without crashing. So my point is, I wouldn't mind being part of a customer testing program for VOOM, since watching HDTV is a hobby anyway and it's in my best interest to help them get better.

OK. Well this post it getting way too long, so I'll quit. Thanks again for this forum and all the information. Overall, at this point, I am very happy that I decided to join VOOM!

Richard

 

[Ilya]

zvezman,
Welcome to VOOM and to the forum! Congratulations on your new install!
I don't know the details of the PG download process, but my personal experience agrees with your observations. I seem to get more lockups after reboots if I start switching channels within the first few minutes after a reboot. Also, the PG seems to load faster if not interrupted.
As for testing, VOOM has a certain number of Beta-testers, from what we know, but as for the "official" customer testing program, I don't think they have such program at this point. Feel free to declare yourself a tester. Aren't we all??? And please share your findings with all of us in this forum and with VOOM!

Good luck!

 

[trm17118]

New install 7/31/04

I've been a c-band subscriber for 15 plus years with a 10' dish and a 4DTV receiver. When I got my Samsung HLN617W 61" DLP HDTV, I wanted the best and most HD programming I could find. Research showed that c-band and even 4DTV was losing subscribers at a high rate and I didn't see them putting more HD channels in their line ups. That settled, I ordered Voom while I waited for my new TV to be delivered (bought on line, good experience).

In the two weeks waiting for the TV to arrive, got two calls from the installation company confirming our appointment of Friday, July 30th between 8 and 12. Day of install, the crew calls around 11 saying they are running late, will be there around 2 PM. 2 PM comes and they call saying they have truck problems, but it will get fixed that night, can they come by Saturday first thing. Saturday, two young guys who can only be described as less than intelligent and still smelling from yesterday's hot Texas installs, took one look at my house and said they couldn't hit the satellite from my roof due to trees. My c-band sits on the southern part of the yard and has hit ~23 satellites just fine so I asked them if we could use that pole after taking down the aluminum dish. They said no, I should dig another hole, plant a new pole of the exact diameter of their mounting bracket and call back for another install appointment. I told them we could take the old c-band antenna down in 10 minutes and have an awesome platform to mount from. They didn't want to improvise in any way. At this point I wasn't too impressed with the pair who didn't seem to want to work on a Friday afternoon or a Saturday morning and let them go. My buddy came over a while later and we took the old dish down in 10 minutes, got out a compass and protractor and proved to us that we could hit the V* sat from the old dish location.

Called V* customer support and asked for another install company. They essentially said the one I was assigned to was the best/only one for San Antonio. They gave me the direct number to the install company so I called and asked for another crew. He said he would see what he could do. I the intervening three or four hours, I lost a lot of hope that V* could be installed at my house and was already looking at Dish as an alternative as my next door neighbor has them and the look angle was perfect from the house roof. Just as I was about to give up on V* and cancel, I got a call from their installer who asked if he could come over. I thought he was going to just do another site survey, but it turns out he was there to install. He looked at the newly vacated c-band pole and said, he thought he could make it work and reuse the old c-band cables which already run to the house and are known to be good. It took him less than 20 minutes to temporarily mount the dish and install the receiver and with a little pushing and shoving got an initial signal strength of 85. An hour and a half later, he had two V* receivers installed and I was getting 95 on the sat and 85 on the OTA along with most (missing PBS) of the OTA local channels.

Picture quality is awesome. Had the pixelation problem but found the fix in these forums. The STBs seem to be a little quirky. The one in my bedroom doesn't like you to channel surf too fast and have had to reboot a few times. The one upstairs was turned off over night and when turned on forgot the channel guide. Took 25 minutes to get it back after soft reboot.

All in all with the free offer for install and equipment I think this is the best thing going. Love the extreme sports and HD music channel. I'm recommending V* to others.

Love the forum. Lots of help. Tony

 

[Ilya]

trm17118,
Welcome to the forum! Glad you solved your installation problems.
The STB in your bedroom may not have the latest version yet. Make sure to turn it off (put it in standby) overnight to get the version update.

 

[Jobman]

Another Bad Installer / Good Installer Story

Hello Everyone!

I am in a town in California called Vallejo, east of San Francisco about 30 miles. I live in the Southeast section, and sort up 1/3 the way up the SE side of a hill, and in a bit of a dip in the hill - not the best for cell phones or eastward Sat's.

I have had DTV w/ locals for years and will keep it for awhile longer - lots there that my wife likes to watch that V does not yet have.

I had been trying to get VOOM installed for the past 3 moths, and finally was successful on Sunday, 8/1.

Typically, (from what I have read), my first installer came out, used his compass and said no way to Voom and to my local channels. ( I will post his info in the Installers section)

Of course, after reading all the posts in here, I called V and asked for another company and installer. From there, it was a comedy. 3 "Lost" appointments, 2 scheduled for the next day, without any advance notice. (I couldn't make them as I had to work). Two of the above were even booked within a day of each other. Not sure if that was a V mistake or Installs.
I even had V change my original account number and start me all over again. That seemed to work.
I was set up with another company, took my 1/2 day off work, and they called at 7:30 am to say he had been in an accident, and could they reschedule for Sunday? What the heck! I waited this long.

Anyway, he arrived at 2pm. (it was a 7-11 time window).
Used his compass, walked around and said - NO PROBLEM!!!

1 hour later, I was set up and watching HD with a 94 strength. AMAZING!

Now, I only get 3 OTA's, and according to Antenna-Web and my installer, I should get 15. Called V and they are setting me up with a larger OTA in 10 days. (Yea, we shall see!)

Anyway, I'm happy so far, I still beat the price increase and the picture is excellent. I requested the same installer for the OTA, I hope I will get him. His company CARES!!!! I will also post the good about them in the Installers section.

Looking forward to the Olympics in HD!!!

Thanks for reading.

Mike

 

[Vaggeto]

Good to hear it... I'm also glad I insisted on a second opinion about getting the service. Back in March I had a very similar story besides the dropped appointments etc...

There are a few simple ways for someone to know if they can get it.

First thing you need is a compass, and the exact direction it's in from your angle. Then you go the the satellite website which I have forgotten, and get the angle of the sats from your location. Print out the angle. Go outside with a level, compass, and the angle, and look where it points. I'm sure many others would also be able to get the service if they didn't take the word of a clueless installer who apparently doesn't want to be paid, or to do a Voom installation.

 

[Sean Mota]

jobman,

welcome and congratulations on your persistence...

 

[Hoopnoop]

I just had Voom installed yesterday and the installation went very well. My time was from 8 to 12 and he showed up at 8:30 and was done by 10. It was a very professional job, good signal strength for the satellite and the locals (despite being 30 miles from the local stations in Washington DC) and an overall good result. I'm very pleased.

One issue has come up. My fox channel was scanned but it is showing NBC instead of Fox. All the other channels are fine. Any suggestions on what I should do? Also, how do you manually scan OTA channels and how can you check the channel strength? And, do new channels get added automatically as they come on line?

Thanks!

 

[Hoopnoop]

Just wanted to say that I got my Fox 5 problem fixed by doing the OTA scanning. I have to say that the OTA scanning works very well. I picked up additional channels and didn't losing any old ones, as was described in separate threads. Very pleased with the new Voom software!

 

[flashback8]

8/16/04 installation near D.C. / Richmond

Hey everyone. I live about halfway between D.C. and Richmond, and Voom was installed today. Please note that I was at work and my roommates are reporting back what happened, so take this post with a grain of salt.

Anyway, while I need some time to get used to the service (and to get my HDTV moved so I can enjoy the full quality!), the install went flawlessly, I'm told. I was given a 8-12 timeframe and the installer (Trey) was here by 9:15. I'm told he knew exactly what he was doing, and from the looks of things, that's probably true. The satellite gets a strong signal and the OTA antenna, despite being in a weird spot, gets most of the significant local channels. PBS and UPN seem to be MIA, and Fox isn't always there, but the other majors (plus MHz, a great global news channel) come in quite well.

So, in a nutshell, I'm pleased so far. Maybe I lucked out but I seem to have gotten a great installation and, while I can't fully judge until my HDTV gets moved, the quality seems fine so far. I don't have golden eyes or ears, so unless my HDTV really brings out the flaws, I think it's safe to say I'll be a happy camper.

 

[emtownsend]

Any more news on the new satellite? I live in the Pacific Northwest (Washington/Idaho border) and cannot get Voom yet. Tried twice. The new satellite location is in site for my home, so there is hope, but only IF they get it moving!
Thanks!