Disasterous Home Move experience (so far)

Back in April, I knew I would be moving from my old address (Home 1) at the end of June, so.. in May, I contacted BT's Home Move Team to arrange for my services to be installed at my new address (Home 2) a couple of days after I was due to move in (an engineer was booked for 28/06 pm). In total, I have a phone line, call sign, anonymous call reject, call minder extentions, caller display, ring back and call waiting.
When I placed the order in May, I was told I could move my old numbers to the new address without problem. Anyway, the 28th came and went and no engineer visited although we did have a dialing tone when tested. However, the phone didn't ring when either line or Call Sign numbers were called and the caller would just get a single ring tone and then the line would drop.
I called 150 the following day and was put through to, what seemed like a customer call centre in India. After 30 minutes of waiting on the phone whilst the operator tried to get through to an engineer, I had to give in as I had somewhere else to be. I left my mobile number with the operator and asked for someone to call me back when she finally managed to get through to the engineers. No call ever came.
I called 150 again on the 30th which was again replied by some gentleman in India and was told the hold up was due to an issue with activating the call sign service. I was asked again for my call sign tel. number as they did not appear to have it on their system and I was assured that the issued would be resolved "within 24 hours" now that they had the number.
I called 150 again Thursday pm and elected to be put through to the Home Move team this time round to find out why my order had still not been fulfilled. I was promptly told that the order had obviously not been completed correctly and that the issue would be passed to a manger who would phone me back within 2 hours. I gave my mobile number again and waited. No call ever came.
Friday AM. I contacted the Home Move Team yet again on 150 and was told that the order could not be fulfilled as they had received "conflicting information" from me. I asked what this was and I was told that I had given my Call Sign number but I was unable to take that with me because a new number would have to be generated if I opted to transfer the call sign service despite the fact that a) I had previously moved my call sign number before on a previous move and b) BT customer service reps had constantly asked for my call sign number up to this point. I was told that my original order would have to be cancelled and a new order generated. How long was I expected to wait? Well, as it was BT's mess up in the first place by not placing the order correctly, they would be able to get the line on by Tuesday 6th! Oh, but they would have to allocate me a ghost number temporarily because my original number had now been assigned to the previous order but no fear, they would be able to get it reallocated by the 7th. Feeling the issue had been resolved, albeit delayed, I felt somewhat happier UNTIL....
A nagging feeling in the back of my mind was saying to me to log in to the BT Order Tracking system online with the new order number I'd been given. I inputted the VOL number and new postcode. NOTHING. Order could not be found. I inputted the VOL number and my old postcode. VOILA. There was the order. A quick check to 150 yesterday morning confirmed my worst fears. The order had been allocated to my old address!!!!! The apologetic BT customer services rep. told me, once again, my order had to be cancelled and another one raised for new address. Oh, and, the system is telling me "we won't be able to complete this order until 19th July" WHAT!!!!????? I announced. "Don't worry" I was told, "due to the error/circumstances we'll be able to bring the order forward but I can't offer you an earlier date at the moment because the order has to be accepted by Open Reach". I was then asked to call back later on in the afternoon so that Open Reach had opportunity to accept order and an earlier date could be arranged.
Guess what! I did that and Steve the Customer Service guy promptly told me there was nothing they could do to bring the order forward because it was not an Open Reach error but a BT one and Open Reach can't prioritise BT customers over other customers. I was offered 1 month's free line rental for my inconvenience and "was there anything else I could help you with?" I exclaimed "so, you're telling me that, despite no fault of my own, you are leaving me without a phone line and other subsequent services for 3 weeks and there is nothing you can do to alleviate the situation". I was then, quite curtly told, that I had received one month's line rental free for the inconvenience and that, in the past, BT might have had some sway with Open Reach, but not any longer. And that ended the call.
If this is what BT determines as, I quote "moving with less stress", I think they need to re-evaluate their competences, customer service and what the customer considers satisfactory!!!!!!
Mark (and very peeved off)

Hi Mark,
This doesn't sound good at all. If you'd like us to look into this email me your details and a link to this thread at [email protected] and I'll make sure there aren't any further problems with the order.
Stephanie
Stephanie
BTCare Community Manager
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Similar Messages

Trying to organise a home move, so far taken over ...

My parents have been trying to organise a home move to their new home for over a month. So far BT have cut off the line, re-ionstated it back to the old property under a new account and thats it. Complaints have been logged etc and promises to call back but no-one has ever called back or moved this forward at all! Move will reuquire an engineer visit which is supposed to take 16 days, but has not even been arranged yet. Please help!

Hi jonchatt,
If you can fill out the contact us form in the "about me" section of my profile, we can take a look.
Cheers,
Chris
BT Moderator Team
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If someone answers your question correctly please let other members know by clicking on ’Mark as Accepted Solution’.

New Customer - All my experiences so far have been...

My experience so far after joining BT from Sky on 12th Aug.
Joined on 12th August - nice lady on the phone tells me she has managed to secure me a Saturday (30/8) appointment for an broadband engineer, other services (phone, tv) will be available on 30/8
I get an email confirming the date the engineer will visit (30/8), and the date the vision box (28/8) will arrive
I get a mysterious empty bag in the post from BT asking me to return fault products, I call up BT on 22/8 to check what the bag is, they say it's a mistake and there is nothing wrong with the order
I take the day off work (28/8) to collect the vision box as it says you need to be there to sign for it
The box doesn't arrive, day off work wasted
I call BT on 28/8 to ask what's up and they say that my whole order has been stopped because the engineer would never go out on a saturday. Not that the order has been attempted to move, or I have had a call from BT to explain the problem, that my WHOLE order (tv, broadband, phone) has been stopped and it is only because I've just called them that I know the state of the order. As such, no services will be available as promised.
I explain that I have no TV, Phone or Broadband and that my wife works from home so this is a major problem. I get told than an expert will call me and take me through the process, however, for some reason this wont be for another four days (1/9) before I am contacted to find another date
I will now have to take another day off for the engineer (my wife doesn't want to be responsible for discussing the installation with the engineer), and my wife will have to buy a 3G dongle (we do not get bt free wifi reception) so that she can still work.
I've only been with BT for 3 weeks now, but I've been let down by silly mistakes, poor service and I'm still waiting in a house without any services.
This isn't the service I expected ... I think moving to BT was a mistake.
David

Hi Mellidav,
Welcome to the community forum. I can take a look at the details of your complaint. Please send me in your details using the "Contact The Mods" link found in my profile.
Thanks
PaddyB
BTCare Community Mod
If we have asked you to email us with your details, please make sure you are logged in to the forum, otherwise you will not be able to see our ‘Contact Us’ link within our profiles.
We are sorry but we are unable to deal with service/account queries via the private message(PM) function so please don't PM your account info, we need to deal with this via our email account :-)

HD - Motion JPEG-A vs Animation for home movies transferred to video ?

Hi,
A vendor offers a "1560x1080p HD" transfer of home movie film to one of 4 formats.
We'd like to preserve as much useful information as possible in case the very old film deteriorates, but also would consider editing in future. The choices:
High Definition Quicktime Motion JPEG-A - 50GB per hour
High Definition Quicktime Component video ~ 290GB per hour
High Definition Quicktime Animation ~ 370GB per hour
High Definition Quicktime Raw ~ 490GB per hour
They suggest Motion JPEG-A as a "a very good compromise between high quality images and a reasonable data rate" for most users."
To my eye (on a 21" computer screen) their 2 second clips look about the same (but the source doesn't seem very sharp). My 2009 iMac doesn't seem to choke on playing 2 second clips of each format.
Any help in choosing which format to order would be appreciated.

As far as the codecs, my unschooled tendency has been to avoid lossy compression when possible. (I always keep an original TIFF (LZW) image when converting to JPEG for import to PPT...)
This is fine if you have sufficient disk space available. However, there is quite a range of data rates here. Motion JPEG would allow about 19 hours of content to be stored per TB of storage space available while RAW reduces that amount to less than 2 hours. Since it is likely you would want to use this format for long-term archival storage, whatever drive(s) you you use to hold the data would be, more or less, "dedicated" to this purposed for as long as you intend to hold onto the data. Further, it you want to protect the data by RAID redundancy, these storage capacities could be reduced by as much as half-- i.e., less than one hour of RAW content per TB of drive space to less than 10 hours of RAW compressed video. So one very important question is how many hours of content are you talking about and how many drives/drive systems are you willing to dedicate to the non-temporary storage of your content.
I have no video editing experience (outside of fumbling with MPEG Streamclip).
MPEG Streamclip is a very handy utility and works fine for cutting and merging segments. However, if you plan to add titles, transitions, layer addition sound tracks, work with theme styles, or apply "motion" effects, then you will likely want to do your editing in a dedicated video editing app. And, since iMovie is probably already available to you on your current system, it would likely be something you will "play" with at some time or another in conjunction with the content mentioned. Hover, if this is the case, you will not want to re-compress the files for editing in the iMovie '08 (or later) app. As previously mentioned, the "new" version of iMovie does not like the Animation codec. And, which it will accept and "edit" the content, when exported by iMovie, it produces a "black" display output and would not, therefor be a viable option for "native" iMovie editing. (Am assuming Apple still has not "fixed" this problem in the most recently released update but have not personally checked on this since this version only runs on an Intel platform and I do most of my editing on an old PPC G5 model.) Again, just a "heads up" in case you plan to go this route.
Current use of the transferred film might be to trim/edit segments to burn standard SD DVDs. I suppose the most far-out use of these 1080p files would be to make HD Bluray discs - in a future where both my Mac has a burner and my TV a player.
As previously indicated, SD DVDs would most likely limit your final encodings to 720x480 MPEG-2/AC3 or MPEG-2/PCM burns, any of the stated target compression formats would more than suffice. Further, even a 50 GB/hour format equates to something on the order of 110 Mbps or about 8 times what is typically used for SD Motion JPEG and should, as indicated, provide adequate "headroom" for "visual perception" equivalents. (I.e., your final quality will likely depend more on the quality of your source films than on the codec you select.) In fact, if the source fils are of really good quality, you may even be able to create short HD videos and burn them to DVD using the latest version of Toast. Of course, you would still need an HD player to view them. (There are, however, other issues with color sampling/space which may or may not be significant to you.)
In my case, the ease of work flow is just as important as the quality of the final product. The MJPEG format, in addition to requiring less non-temporary storage space (i.e., fewer drives/systems), also is, I believe, one of the formats that "thumbnail" most quickly in iMovie (and/or GarageBand). This may or may not be important to you as far as editing goes. As previously stated, it is also a video format that is native edit compatible with all versions of iMovie. As such, given what you've said thus far, I would lean toward recommending it as the more suitable compression format at this point.

Importing Video From Home Movie DVD

I have home movies burnt onto a DVD from the original VHS Tapes, and want to edit the the using IMovieHD 6, but when attempting to import, I get an error message that says, "The File could not be imported". Quicktime was unable to parse it.
According to what I read, IMovie should be compatible with Mpeg-4 Files.
I've even tried to create Mpeg-4 files from the original video files off the DVD. Still no dice.
Dying to get all the 'slow' moments out of all the hideous Birthday Party footage.
I'm a newbie so forgive my lack of experience.
Thanks
robio

Hi Robio:
Welcome to discussions!
Don't suppose you have the original DV tape-do you? If so, that's your best bet for editing..
With that said, if you decide you need to use the DVD, then you will need to convert that DVD into something that imovie can use. (Thus, there is a possiblitlity of loss if quality..)
(I quote Karsten Schlüter here:)
for 20$ get the Apple
mpeg2 plugin
and for free
Streamclip for converting mp1/2/4, divx, avi, vob...
other tools are:
* DVDxDV, it
has a 30d trial period (testdrive sets a watermark)... and cost 25$
Cinematize
60$
* Mpeg2Works >25$ + Apple plug-in
http://danslagle.com/mac/iMovie/tips_tricks/6010.shtml
http://danslagle.com/mac/iMovie/tips_tricks/6018.shtml
or connect Your Camera to a DVD-player and copy to tape or import
trough if Your Camera handles that...
iMovie is a video edit app meant to work with firewire connected
miniDV camcorders
Sue

Help!! I can't get my new macbook to print with my Dell 155w OR burn a home movie to DVD

I cannot get my very recently purchased macbook pro to burn a home video to dvd OR connect to my dell 155w printer. I bought a macbook because it was so highly recomended. But I don't want to keep replacing things. I am so frustrated. I wanted a macbook because of its reputation. But I can't seem to figure out anything. I'm dissapointed and thinking I will just return it.

Your problem may be able to be solved but take this from a Long time Windows user and current Mac owner. Macs are not easier to use. Mac break down just as often as PCs, percentage wise as to how many are sold/produced.
They use the exact same hardware as Win PCs.
The learning curve for OS X is greater then for Windows.
Not sure of the age of your printer but it may not be supported in the newest Mac OS, Lion.
We would need a little more info on how you are trying to connect TO the printer. USB cable or Wirelessly.
As far as burning a Home Movie to DVD. Apple use to supply a program called iDVD for this but with the introduction of Lion OS they stopped supplying that program. You could try another burning program. Try Burn or you could buy something like Toast (Burn is free).
Personally I would return your Macbook Pro and stick to what you know with a good PC notebook.
Apple has a 14 day No Questions Asked return policy for Full refund. Take advantage of that policy.

Best way to convert home movie VHS tapes so they can be edited in iMovie HD

Please help! I'm sorry this question is going to be long, but I'm a novice at this.
My goal is to get my VHS home movies (I have about 30 of them) into iMovie so I can do two things.
First I want to burn DVD's so I'll have a copy of the VHS tapes before they go bad.
Secondly, I want to be able to extract small clips from all of the tapes and combine them in a new iMovie project.
Here's what I've done so far:
I purchased a Canopus ADVC110 and got someof my VHS tapes converted digitally but the file sizes were HUGE and eating up my hard drive space. I was down to 6 GB of space left on my hard drive and almost crashed my Mac.
I deleted all these huge files and got my Mac back up to having 111 gigs of space left. Whew!
This week I purchased a Pinnacle converter and started all over. I took a VHS tape, and it was compressed into a nice small Mpeg-4 file and went to iTunes.
Then I tried to drag and drop it from itunes to imovie. That didn't work. I then dragged the movie to my desktop and then dragged it to imovie..... looks like this was going to take a long time to get into imovie. I'm thinking this is too many steps.
Now I am importing the file into iMovie by importing directly from itunes. The file size is 1.04 GB and it is 1 hour and 54 minutes long. It is taking a loooong time to import this movie....like 100 minutes.
I am afraid I am doing this the hard way.
Plus, after reading all the discussion boards and all the problems people are having... I don't even know if I'll be able to successfully edit this movie once it's imported. Plus, after I've edited it (if I can) will I be able to transfer the clips to another iMovie project?
I'm happy with the file size that the Pinnacle converter is giving me. I'm happy with the way the movie appears in itunes.
Because I have **so many VHS tapes** to convert, I'm asking you all if there is an easier way for me to complete this task!
Thanks in advance for any advise. Keep in mind that I'm not tech-sophisticated..... just a middle aged Grandma trying to preserve memories of my family!

_Share" the highlight as suggested_
Thanks Lennart..... I'm not sure I know what you meant by the above.
Do you mean that I share the little clips I want to use in the 'best of project'?
I read the MacWorld article.... it's great thanks!
I want to keep all these converted movies on my hard drive because down the road I want to extract other clips from them so I can make a 'best of' movie for my other family members. I may want to do that next year.... or whatever..... so I want to have the imovies available for me when that time comes.
In order to do this am I going to have to buy a lot..... and I mean ALOT of extra hard drive space? That darn Canopus was really making files for me that were like 60-80GB's per one half hour movie!!
Hey, I really appreciate all the time you are spending with me on this topic. Making these imovie memories are so very important to me.

AVHCD my HD experience so far with Premier Elements 7

Hi
I thought I would try and contribute to the ongoing discussion about HD video, and in particular the use of AVHCD media with Premiere Elements 7. I
wandered into this arena rather than planning my way in but luckily I am having a good time. I hope my experiences may be useful to others here.
My aim is to shoot and edit video at the best quality possible but remaining comfortably within the current capability of my PC and its
operating system.
I am no editing expert by any means but I have been editing my home movies for several years using various bits of software and operating systems
along the way.
I am brand new to the world of High Definition and I currently intend to playback my movies on a Sony PS3 and a high definition tv. I archive my
finished movies on hard disk rather than burn to DVD. I dont yet have a blueray burner.
My current equipment.
================
Camera
======
My camera is the Sony AVCHD HDR-TG7VE. It has 4 HD recording modes.
HD FH = 1920 x 1080/50i 16M
HD HQ = 1440 x 1080/50i 9M
HD SP = 1440 x 1080/50i 7M
HD LP = 1440 x 1080/50i 5M
For further details see here
http://www.sony.co.uk/product/cam-high-definition-on-memory-stick/hdr-tg7ve
Computer
========
My editing system consists of the following;
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6600 @ 2.40GHz
4 GB RAM
3 SATA Hard drives, for for system files, 2 WD caviar black drives for editing.
Windows Vista Home Premium Service Pack 2 32bit version.
Premier Elements 7 full version.
Windows System Assessment
CPU Score 5.60 (Calculations per second)
Memory Score 5.90 (Memory operations per second)
Graphics Score 5.90 (Desktop performance for Windows Aero)
D3D Score 5.90 (3D business and gaming graphics performance)
Disk Score 5.70 (Disk data transfer rate)
Windows Experience Index 5.60 (Base score)
Current workflow
================
I have only been experimenting for a couple of days but this is my current
workflow.
I shoot my video in HD HQ.
I use the supplied Sony software to get the files into my PC
I convert those files into MPEG2HD using Free AVCHD Converter V1.0 as recommended on this site.
I leave the output format as standard except I raise the Video bitrate to 2500 Kbps as recommended in other posts on here.
I use the HDV 720p 25 preset for my project
I output as a PC file, MPEG HD720p
Using these settings I have a pleasant editing experience and the finished product is certainly much better than using standard definition. When I add my clips to the timeline I don't get the red bar across the top of them unless I add an effect. This saves rendering time and provides for smooth playback within Premiere Elements 7 as I check my edits.
Now, I have no idea if what I am doing is correct and I would dearly love to hear suggestions for how I can improve things further. The good news for me however is that I can use my new camera without having to upgrade my PC.
Regards
Ken

Ken,
Welcome to the forum, and thank you for taking the time to post your workflow.
While the CPU could be beefier, it's comforting to see that your I/O sub-system (your HDD's) are set up better than 99% of the people out there, for editing. Way to go! BTW, if your CPU is doing it for you, I'd not worry about it, until you build your next machine. You are getting more out of yours, than many with Quad-core chips, and some with dual-Quads. That is a testament to a strong machine and a clean one too.
With your sucess, I feel that your workflow might well be a useful baseline for others.
Thanks for posting,
Hunt

Home Media experience for the whole family

I'm new to using iTunes. I just recently got an iPhone 4s and even more recently; an iPad. I live in my house with my wife and 3 children. We all have iPhones and iPads. I think everyone already has their own Apple ID account. I have a home wifi network and a Windows 2008 server with a file share of some .mp4 video files. I bought iHome Server (software) and I like it because is auto tags the movie files meta data, and keeps iTunes up and running on the Windows 2008 server. Right now I have my iPhone, iTunes (on the server), and iPad all using my Apple ID and I can watch movies on the iPad and iPhone with the Home Share just fine.
HOWEVER, how do I allow my wife and kids to stream movies to their Apple devices on our home network? My understanding in that Home Sharing requires all devices to use the same Apple ID account. Can I create a new Apple ID account just for the media home share? Is it possible to setup the iPhones and iPads to use one Apple ID account for buying apps and such from the iTunes Store, yet another Apple ID for streaming from the home share? Will it allow all of these devices to connect? If every iPhone and iPad in my house were to connect to my media share that's 5 iPhones and 5 iPads! If I get all of this figured out, I may even include a couple of Apple TV's!
I'm trying to create a total home entertainment experience, and I'm just looking for how to accomplish this.

Sorry guys,
after surfing through "More Like This" I found my answers

My Infinity experience so far......

Hi all
Well I thought I would post a message with my experience so far after returning to BT for internet service.
I should first mention I have an extremely low opinion of BT because ever since I first started dealing with them back in 2001 I have had nothing but headaches, blunders, missed call outs and generally poor service. I could go into all of those fiascos, but they have been water under the bridge for a few years now.
Anyway, I decided I wanted an FTTC connection and although my provider at the time could supply it, they wanted to charge nearly £100 and would not supply a cable modem/router so I would have to buy my own.
After some consideration I decided to give BT another try after walking away from them back in 2008.
OK, now no offence to anyone in those call centres in India, but I live in the UK, so I want to talk to a British person, or at least someone who is perfectly fluent in English (not reading from a script). I knew this was a slim hope so I decided to go the fool proof way and place my order online.
Order duly placed and on my order tracking page I had a button to click and enter my MAC code when I received it. I didnt get that for another couple of days but when I went back to my order page to enter it - the button to enter the MAC code had gone! My order was apparently all on track. So I called BT and luckily got through to a UK call centre where the customer service representative checked into the problem. The result?
Well, for some reason they had two orders on the system that were conflicting, and causing an erroneous order status to be displayed on my tracking page. He went off for a few minutes, came back and said it had now all been sorted - both orders had been deleted and he had manually entered the order on the system with the MAC code I had just provided.
Great! All on track now..........
The engineer was booked for Saturday 12th January, 2013. The home hub 3 was due to be dispatched by Tuesday 8th. Anyway, by wednesday 9th, there was no oder tracking code on my order page, so once again I called BT. This time I got through to India where unfortunately the BT representative was unable to answer my question and the conversation went something like:
Me: Hi I have an order placed for Infinity and the BT home Hub was supposed to be dispatched by now but I do not have any tracking number on my order page. Can you please check to see if it has been dispatched, and if not, when it will be sent?
BT: One moment sir, I will just check the order details now. Yes sir I can see on the system that your order is due to complete on 12th January
Me: Yes I know that, but the problem is the BT home hub has not yet been dispatched and the engineer needs it to install Infinity. Can you please tell me when it will be dispatched?
BT: Yes sir, I can see from the order that your home hub is due to be delivered by Thursday 10th January.
Me: Yes I know it is supposed to be delivered by then, but it is now Wednesday and my order status page on the BT website says it has still not been dispatched - meaning it will not be here tomorrow. Can you please check why it has not been dispatched?
BT: One moment please sir I will just put you on hold and check the system (on hold for about 30 seconds).....Hello sir, sorry for putting you on hold, I have checked the system and I can confirm that your Home hub is due to be delivered on the 10th January, and the engineer is booked for Saturday 12th January. Your unlimited evening and weekend phone plan will be activated by midnight on 14th January. Is there anything else I can help you with sir?
Me: (silently banging my head up a brick wall) - No, no thank you, that will be all. 'Click'.
So I leave it an hour and call back - purposely to a different BT department where I got someone from the UK (presumably) and I explained that I have a problem and I would like to talk to someone in the UK please - NOT in India. So I was placed on hold for a minute and transfered to a representative who could help. Fortunately it was someone who was perfectly fluent in English (although did have an odd accent - so it may not have been their primary language). This person checked the order and came back to say:
BT: Hi sir, sorry for placing you on hold for so long, I have checked the system and it appears you have three orders in place and they are conflicting with each other. The reason the home hub has not been dispatched yet is because the order is saying you have not yet provided a MAC code.
Me: Uhhhhhm, I provided the MAC code over the telephone over a week ago......
BT: Oh.....Sorry sir I just need to pop you on hold while I look into this.
(A few mins later)
BT: Hi again sir, sorry for placing you on hold for so long - I have had a colleague check the system and it appears that one order is cancelled, the other is live with a MAC code, but is not present on your order status, and the final order is live on your order page but showing as no MAC code present - hence why the Hub has not been dispatched yet.
To cut a long telephone conversation between myself and several people BT short - their system dropped the ball big time, and a kind gentleman in India (who could speak fluent English) put everything right. Kind of.
I was verbally promised by him that he would expidite my order through the system, and that the engineer would still call on 12th Jan, even though that slot was now no longer available. But he said he would call me back in the morning to finalise all the details. By 3pm the following day I had not recieved that call.
So I called BT back.
Again I explained to the first person to pick the phone up that I wanted to deal with someone fluent in English. Thankfully the person who answered after a brief period on hold appeared to be British. I went through the problems again and it turned out BT could not honour my original appointment of the 12th, and the kind gentleman in India had placed a note on the system to say as much - to which my first question was "OK, thats fine but why has nobody been in touch as promised?". I got a general response of "I can't answer that sir". So I spent half an hour on the phone with a very nice person from BT who finalised all of the details and managed to expedite my new appointment to 16th January, which I was really pleased with after reading horror stories of people having to wait 2-3 weeks or even a month!
Also, a credit to BT was that they arranged to waiver my first months charges for my troubles. Added to that, on my original order I had ordered a telephone as well, which was offered at £10 less than the BT shop were selling it. I explained this, and they credited my account £10 because it was not showing on their system as available, but the BT shop was showing stock - but at £10 more.
So on Monday 14th Jan, my new Home Hub was delivered as promised in email and SMS messages. Great - almost there!!
So - the day of reckoning - Wednesday 16th January 2013...........
I was up early and ready to answer the door by 07:30 - just in case the engineer was early (my slot was 8am-1pm). I had alo booked the afternoon off work as the email said I needed to make sure I was available for 3-4 hours after my appointment slot ended.
tic, toc, tic, toc the morning wore on. I sat on the 2 seater looking hopefully out of the window. No van. No BT man.
tic toc tic toc. I spent some time on the forums reading horror stories so decided to be pro active and contact a mod - just in case.
Anyway, I got that sinking feeling I have had so many times before when it comes to BT engineers not showing up, and I started to feel disappointed and a little annoyed. I went into the kitchen an started making lunch when there was a knock at the door!
Could it be? Why yes it was! It was a sub-contractor operating on behalf of BT Openreach, but I didn't care, he was here to fit my Infinity! I was grinning from ear to ear. The engineer was competent and swift, and all in all it took around an hour and a half from him knocking the door to me waving bye bye - and that included a 20 min trip to connect the line. Not only that, but as soon as the Hub was connected I was live getting 51mb down and 10mb up - which was exactly as estimated on the speed checker.
So nearly 48hrs later and I am still connected. No drop outs and no drop in speed so far. Fingers crossed it will remain so!
So overall, my experience has been mixed. Shocking service with regard to blunders and problems (yet again) but at the same time I have mostly spoken to people who have helped and got my order back on track. I think it has to be said though, that these problems should not exist and it was only due to my knowledge in dealing BT over the years that I was chasing everything up regulalry which is why the problems came to the attention of BT in the first place. If I had not chased at every turn I would be sitting here with no new connection, and in limbo.
That said, I have to say the telephone service has vastly improved since last time I dealt with BT. I dont think I was on hold waiting to speak to an advisor for any longer than 5-10 mins - and in most cases it was less than 5. But again, due to my past experiences I know how to manipulate the system to speak to the right people and not be transferred to an automated service or to India.
Interestingly, when chatting to the engineer I asked how many he has to do per day. Eight, apparantly. He openly admitted he only normally manages six. Sometimes seven on a good day. I could perhaps say it was because he was slow - but he was very efficient in my house, and I can only assume he continues that efficiency in every property. My conclusion must be that he is simply having unrealistic expectations placed upon him, and two households on the 16th were likely to be disappointed.
My advice - always ask for an AM appointment as there is more chance you will see your engineer.
I would like to know how the appointments are allocated though, and whether it is BT or Openreach that are at fault. Are BT thrusting too many appointments onto Openreach, or are Openreach taking more than they can handle?
So far I am happy with my Infinity, and it does what I wanted it to do. But the crux of the entire process is, why am I so happy? Because I was expecting BT to fail again - which to a large extent they did. I am happy because they did what they were supposed to do. But surely that is a basic element of any customer service? Why should I be overjoyed that they did what they are supposed to? It is kind of like praising a brand new car for starting first time. It is not anything special, it should be expected.
Unfortunately, BT and Openreach have the monopoly, and whilst that is the case we are all at their mercy. Even if you use another provider for FTTC they will send an Openreach engineer. I personally do not think such a monopoly should be allowed, and I think part of the woeful lack of respect for customers is the fact that customers have a woeful lack of options.
My example is just how badly wrong BT can get one simple order. Yes it turned out OK in the end, but only because I was on the ball. I should not have to chase BT to get it right. Why, since I started using them in 2001 have their overall levels of service still not improved? Why am I still having to chase them? Why are they generating three orders and why are there no systems in place to prevent that from happening? Why when they rectify the order they have fouled up, do I suffer from a 3 day delay in installation? OK, its only 3 days - but the fact is it would have been far longer if I had not been on the ball and been expecting BT to fail.
Again it boils down to monopoly - and one which should have been stamped out years ago. Since 2006 BT tried to appease Ofcom by giving the illusion of a fair crack of the whip to other suppliers. But Openreach report directly to the BT CEO. They are an arm of BT and therefore the monopoly remains. Whoever your provider is with, they will be using BT equipment in BT exchanges (unless you are on Cable)
So I suppose the bottom line is that when you don't have any real competition, you can be rubbish and nobody can do a thing about it.
So yes, I got what I wanted in the end, and I am happy with the result - but it is one I have earned myself, and I cannot give BT as a company any praise.
I can, however, praise their staff for bearing the brunt of their companies failings. Keep up the good work guys, and maybe one day you will work for a company that deserves you.
If you are still reading, thanks for bothering!
Kind Regards

praetorian wrote:
foxtrottango52 wrote:
HI. IS THE BT INFINITY GOOD. IS IT OP1 ARE OP2
Hi
Yes, the Infinity seems to be very good
I am on Option 2 receiving 50-51MB down and 9-10MB up -which is exactly what BT estimated I would recieve on their website. I can download things off Steam at 6.1 mb/s - which I thought would be higher, but it is still 7 times faster than I was getting before
I also have not had any disconnects or drop in performance.....yet. Of course it is early days but so far the connection is great. I cannot fault it really, but getting to this point was definitely a headache!
Kind Regards
That's very good speed, but I think you have your MB and mb's the wrong way round, as I am guessing your internet speed is 50-51mb and your download speed is 6.1MB

How to play home movies on TV via Iphone and NAS Drive?

I have a problem playing transferred home movies on a flat screen tv through the “TV Out” feature of my Iphone 4.
Brief History:
I have captured about a TB worth of various home movie videos from VHS tape to my PC hard drive in AVI format using AVS Video Recorder. I used AVS Video Converter to convert the AVI movie files to M4V files, to play these movies on my IPhone. I then copied these M4V video files to a Western Digital “My Book Live” NAS Drive which allows me to view any video using my Iphone, via a WD app, without using Iphone internal memory. This works so far.
The problem is that I thought I could show these videos to family members through their big screen TV at their house, and by hooking my Iphone to their tv’s audio/video inputs, via cables, using TV Out and access the videos from my NAS Drive as I could when using the Iphone alone. However, the home movies do not play on the TV! After a conversation with Apple Techs I was told that using the Iphone’s “TV Out” feature to view video onto a TV, via the Iphone , only works for video that is stored on the internal memory of the Iphone itself, not for accessing 3rd party drives as my NAS.
I was told that there are ways around this like:
-    Syncing certain videos to the Iphone (to save storage space) and viewing them on TV via “TV OUT”
-    Getting an IPad (bigger screen then Iphone) and accessing the videos through the Apple Cloud
-    Using Apple TV and accessing movies via the cloud (which means I would have to bring and hook-up Apple TV to the receiving TV). Not sure about this method.
-    Something about Airplay and mirrioring???
So my question is: Is there any way to access my NAS drive (which has all videos stored) and play those videos on another household’s TV, for many people to comfortably view at once, via my Iphone? Or, is there another method?
Any advice would be appreciated.
Don S.

Ge0ph wrote:
I have a playlist called shows that has a few TV shows, movies, and podcasts. I also have the latest versions of iTunies and Apple TV. The playlist doesn't show up anywhere on the Apple TV.
Where should it be?
the playlist option will show next to where "genre" is only if the playlist contains the appropriate content for the section that you are in.
for example i have a playlist that contains all episodes of a season of King Of Queens. the playlist shows in the "my tv shows" section, but does not in "my movies", as the playlist only contains tv shows.
might be an idea not to mix content in playlists, as you won't be able to play mixed content from a playlist anyway.

How do I get all the control buttons in one place in 3.6.16, like they used to be in previous versions? Having the refresh and stop buttons between address and search windows, and the home button to the far right is awful.

In 3.6.16, the buttons are all over the place. In previous versions, the forward, back, refresh, stop and home buttons were all together. In this version, the refresh and stop buttons are between the address and search windows, and the home button to the far right.
I would love to have them all together as they used to be - much more user friendly that way. I have tried installing alternate themes, but the coding of this version over-rides the themes.

Firefox 4.0 has a combined Reload and Stop and Go button that appears at the right end of the location bar.
To restore the Firefox 3 appearance you can use these steps:
* Open the "View > Toolbars > Customize" window to move the Stop and Reload button out of the location bar.
* Move the Reload and Stop buttons to their previous position at the left side of the location bar.
* Set the order to "Reload - Stop" to get a combined "Reload/Stop" button.
* Set the order to "Stop - Reload" or separate them otherwise to get two distinct buttons.

Home movies from DVD to Mac hard drive

I am an absolute neophyte at playing with video files. I have some VHS camcorder home movies from when my kids were little. A few months ago I asked the local photo shop to copy the videotapes onto DVDs. Now I'd like to save those videos as computer files on my mac, both to preserve them and (some day) edit them. I can't seem to figure out how to do this and any advice would be most welcome.
A week or so ago I tried Handbrake and it only copied a few seconds of video with audio that didn't match. Their support forum had something about using DVDtoOne but I couldn't understand what that was supposed to do so I didn't try it.
Yesterday I downloaded a trial copy of DVDxDV and asked it to make a file compatible with NTCS, Quicktime and iMovie. It seems that it worked wonderfully. However, the file it created from a two hour DVD is more than 25GB! I can't reasonably keep files that huge on my hard drive.
Is there a way to compress the file so that it is more like the size of the original DVD and still preserve the quality? (Maybe Quicktime Pro?)
Or, is there a better way to proceed so that I can preserve/edit these DVD files?
Thanks,
Perry

Moreover, you could try Handbrake.
Handbrake is a software that converts DVD to any format you specify, and it does rely on the popular ffmpeg Unix program. (In fact, I bet most conversion software do rely on ffmpeg...).
I garantee Handbrake is not another of those programs, commonly called thing like DVD2iPod (I don't mean to harm this software if it does really exist) or DVDRIPMAGIX, or well... you know.
So, in Handbrake, there's a list of presets from which you can choose to convert the video to. You should perhaps leave it to Normal (which will encode it to a .mp4 movie, thus rendering you with a far lesser file than 25GB).
Of course, the 25GB you were prompted is an uncompressed file, like DV format is. It is used for editing from uncompressed source, but you are coming from a DVD, which is in the base, not an uncompressed source as far as I know. Thus explaining why the movie on the DVD is not 25GB.
I hope all this will be useful to you!

All is set up ok but when I view a home movie the apple tv reverts to the menu at random times, sometimes every 30 secs or so, sometimes plays for mins before cutting out and then i have to enter menu, go to movies and select the movie then resume play bu

Whwn viewing home movies the movie cuts out back to the general menu at random, forcing me to enter menu again, reselect the movie and hit resume button.
this happens everytime I try to play a movie, maybe after 1 min of play then again after 3 mins, next time it might play for 6 mins then cut out and so on. The macbook pro is not reverting to sleep mode or closing down and the wifi signal is strong. So is the apple tv an expensive load of junk or what?

Welcome to the Apple Community.
Intermittent problems are often a result of interference. Interference can be caused by other networks in the neighbourhood or from household electrical items.
You can download and install iStumbler (NetStumbler for windows users) to help you see which channels are used by neighbouring networks so that you can avoid them, but iStumbler will not see household items.
Refer to your router manual for instructions on changing your wifi channel or adjusting your multicast rate.
There are other types of problems that can affect networks, but this is by far the most common, hence worth mentioning first. Networks that have inherent issues can be seen to work differently with different versions of the same software. You might also try moving the Apple TV away from other electrical equipment.

Apple TV vs. PS3 for photos & home movies

I'm sure some of you have both of these units and have a comparison as to which unit displays photos & home movies better (sharpness, color, etc.) I recently bought the Apple TV and I'm not that impressed with the photo quality and 960x540 home movie recoding quality. The PS3 outputs at 1080p, and should be superior to the Apple TV in quality. I know you can use the Medialink software on the PS3 to interface with my Mac's iphoto & itunes.
Looking for some real world comparisons from owner's of both systems.
Thanks guys

I own both, use a Mac for my computer, and have owned my PS3 longer than the Apple TV.
Honestly, the PS3 sees more use than my ATV. However, for simple viewing of iTunes media on my HDTV, the ATV works well whereas I know I'd have issues with the PS3.
I use a transcoding media app on OSX that allows me to browse through my videos on my PS3 as if my iMac were a media server. The system works quite well, honestly. I'd say that it is EASIER in a way to view non-Apple-formated videos this way, but if it is a standard that iTunes or ATV can play in HD, then the ATV works better and outputs it at the HD res without transcoding loss like I'd see through the PS3-media server linkage.
For example: I have all of Farscape and Babylon 5 bought through the ITMS and thus watch it on my HDTV via the ATV. Also, my other videos that iTunes plays play though the ATV perfectly well without some of the network hitching I get when trying to view them transcoded via the PS3 media server (I'm convinced this is a case of my iMac needing more RAM to let my 2 cores do their work..... if only I had the new 27" iMac.... drool . . . . 4 cores available do to the encoding.....) for the HD versions (for example, the HD version of the popular "where the **** is matt" youtube video).
As an iTunes interface to an HDTV, the ATV does its job and does it well (with some caveats). Outside of that, the PS3 excels. Also, HD movies through the ITMS are nothing compared to their blueray counterparts. Then again, the PSN video store pales in comparison to the ITMS. Star Trek is available in HD through the PSN video store, but the audio is only in 2ch stereo. Sad. I have the movie on blu-ray (which has the audio in 5.1 Dolby TrueHD), so I'm not sure what the HD version is on the ITMS.
I see the 2 systems (ATV and PS3) as complementing each other. My PS3 is my blu-ray player, non-iTunes video player, and game system. My ATV is my iTunes interface for my Home Theater system. However, as I live in an apartment, I more generally just use my apple remote and control the audio on my iMac directly. Still, the ATV is quite useful for nights when I just want to rent a video (the PSN video store is lacking,and the new netflix service for the PS3 requires a Netflix authorization disc to use in the PS3.... most likely due to contractual agreement..... (thankyou M$ for binding Sony's hands like that, you know you're the ones who did that with your money paid to Netflix). The ITMS through the ATV is therefore easier for me to use and more expansive on video selection (though I still have yet to see Gods and Generals appear on the ITMS video store.... grrr), so for HD rental, the ATV is the choice I make.
As far as photos.... since my Photos are in the standard place on my mac, the ATV is more readily there to display them all than is my PS3, which would require me to have up and running the media server app on my Mac (which I don't always have running).
So, like I said, the 2 systems complement each other. Still, for the specific use you're talking about, I think the ATV does just fine. However, if you're looking for a comprehensive system, I might suggest the PS3 first, as you get the PSN, blu-ray player, and game system all in one. If you can, though, BOTH is even better (and affordable since the PS3 Slim now came out.... though I have been hearing gripes about some problems with people's PS3 Slims.... but that's in Sony's Disc. forums, and it is like the ones here: kind of an emergency room).

Disasterous Home Move experience (so far)

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