Private Spice

[vila]

Is anyone else experiencing constant signal drop-outs on this channel?

Anyone know how to contact them? There's a 'Contact' link on their site but they haven't replied to any of the half dozen or more messages I've sent since they became Private Spice.

When it was Spice Platinum they were very helpful and replied to absolutely everything. Since the name change their customer service has been total shite.

[CHendry]

We have had a look to see if there are any reported problems on Private Spice and it is showing that all everything is working fine.
What message are you receiving?

[vila]

Message is either "Service is not running or scrambled" or "Sound not available or scrambled" but, as the latter blanks the screen when displayed, the result is the same - no sound or picture.

The problem isn't continuous but varies from day to day and from time to time on any particular day. Tuesday 7 November was a good example. Evening reception was perfect until the start of the new 24hr schedule at 21:00 GMT when it went totally haywire. For the next hour the signal was going on and off at intervals of anything between 1 second and 30 seconds, the average being about 10 seconds. The longest continuous period of clear reception that I managed to time was 32 seconds. After about an hour the signal improved rapidly and was OK for the rest of the night (or at least as much of it as I watched). On some days there are no problems at all.

I never had any problem with reception until the channel switched to the new transponder. The problems started almost immediately after the switchover. When having these problems I've tried changing channels and find that other channels are still fine, so I feel the problem is unlikely to be at my end.

Thank you for responding to my post, but why have you not replied to any of my several messages on this subject? When a message is submitted via the 'Contact' button on the channel's website an automated response says that a reply will be made in due course but none is ever received. As I said above, this has happened only since the change of name from Spice Platinum to Private Spice - previously I had many helpful e-mail exchanges with Spice staff. I have several questions about recent programming, so is there any other means of direct communication I could use?

[vila]

Sorry- got it wrong. I was trying to recall the onscreen messages from memory and managed to remember the message I get when channel-hopping and hit on encrypted channels I don't have a card for.

The actual message I get, as I did last night, is 'NO OR BAD SIGNAL'. Don't know now if I got the missing sound message right.

Does that help?

[Sexyguy300]

Dont worry your not alone, depending on what sat reciever you have you can have a look at the bitrate of the siganl which is the quality of the stream being sent, spices always seems to be very low which causes the occasional blocky picture, otherwise great though.

but yeah the channel in general was better when it was spice platinum, more UK stuff and less US, not its private spice, i think it broadcasts way too much US stuff personally

[John.h2]

Sounds to me like the channel moved to a transponder that had a footprint focused on a different part of the UK/Europe and your reception has been affected by it.

[vila]

My receiver doesn't talk about bitrate but it does have signal strength and quality indicators. The signal strength is higher than some other channels but the quality is lower.

[vila]

If that's so it would be nice if they came back and owned up. They could also refund part of my subscription as a sign of good faith . . . hey, did I hear pig wings flapping?

[John.h2]

On your first note, I'd say you need a bigger dish to solve the problem.
On your second note, I'd say the problem is at the uplink.

[vila]

Surely 90cm is big enough for Hotbird in East Anglia?