Swisscom TV 2.0 Limited to 1280 x 720 pixel resolution

amoouses

Dear All,

The favourable change in Swisscom Internet and TV pricing led us to change our existing Swisscom TV (version 1) subscription to 2.0

SUMMARY: CURRENTLY between Disappointing and Disaster

I shalltry to justify this classification. But the background is that my wife and I are both Professional Engineers and we wanted to make sure we had not made any mistakes have currently wasted quite a few hours not getting anywhere.

Sumary of Problem

-------------------------

On our Samung 4K TV (which is obviously capable of 720p, 1080p and 4K) when connected to the white Swisscom TV Box (IP1200) Rev 5.0 running with software firmware loaded 1.25.14 with the new Swisscom HDMI cable we only can view transmissions at

1280 x 720 pixels

i.e. NO transmission are sent from the Swisscom box at the expected 1920 x 1080 pixels

I want to give Swisscom some time here to reply to this posting because I'll be writing it up for public consumption soon. here are some factors

NB. All screenshots from the install and problems are available at the picasa album here

https://picasaweb.google.com/110448225895061704359/20150714SwisscomTV20Disaster?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCNfw6peukoOqzAE&feat=directlink

- Initial install failed because although the Remote was initially found, another following screen said it was missing. The fix was to (Hard) reset the box with a button. In which case a DRM restore is attempted

- Once connected all signals received at at 1280 x 720 pixels without exception

- I spend over 2 hours debugging which included

a) trying the swisscom box in each of the 4 HDMI sockets

(reboot swisscom on each attempt)

b) shutdown of Samsung TV and Swisscom box and restart each in sequence

c) Connection of a High Grade computer monitor capable of >> 1920x1080 pels and HDMI standard. Only 1280x720 pixel resolution displayed

d) Relocation of Swisscom TV box to be adjacent to Fibre router instead of via our home 10Gbit copper cabling (well it's Cat 6A and this is 100m 10GBASE-T specd). NO difference

e) Test of Ethernet speed out of cable from Internet... >> 100 Mbps, so the Ethernet feed is not limiting picture.

f) I called Swisscom tech support 0800 800 800, they agreed that the box should support 1080 output but could not find any faults of suggest any more tests

g) A nice technician man arrived late today 20150714. He was adamant that the white box NEVER SUPPORTS 1080 pixel output, so all was /working as designed/

h) I've now checked the German swisscom forum and see people from May 2015 with this issue

example

https://community.swisscom.ch/t5/Swisscom-TV-2-0/Swisscom-Tv-2-0-nur-1280-x-720-p/m-p/385586/highlight/true

i) So to me this is a known issue, yet Swisscom are promoting Swisscom 2.0 on the website. Right now. Like it's a super advanced product.

There is no mention on the HD channel page that

"unfortunately none of the HD channels will be displayed in HD"

https://www.swisscom.ch/en/residential/swisscom-tv/channels/channel-lists.html#selected=tv&tv%5BsubscriptionLanguage%5D=de&tv%5Bhd%5D=true

j) We asked to go back to our previous Swisscom TV (ver 1) set box, the one using Windows CE and a hard disk.

We are still waiting for a response.

Technical Notes

----------------------

Our white box is at hardware 5.0 and software level 1.25.14 updated 28th April 2015

I read that boxes with earlier hardware at 4.1 did provide 1080 pel output, at least before the last software upgrade.

Once again you can view all my screenshots at picassa at fullres.

Design Notes

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- I believe the current unit runs Android and uses Bluetooth to speak to the remote (that's why you need to purchase an addon to get an IR controller to work)

- There is no menu option to set the output screen resolution

- I don't see any diagnostics options or self test from any menu

- There could be a technical splash screen giving boot parameters (selectable on/off)

- There is no telnet or sshd server installed

- Portscan reveals it's not listening on any common port (20-500 checked)

- Not available for query using default SNMP

SO Swisscom

------------------

Please reply meaningfully, I am all ears.

LeylaG

Dear amouses,

Thank you for your post.

We are really sorry that you don't enjoy your Swisscom TV 2.0 service so far and understand your frustration regarding this matter.

Actually, there is an outage since May 2015 which impacts some customers. The TV Box 2.0 only synchronize with the TV in 1280x720 (720p) definition and not in 1920x1080 (1080p). Swisscom recognizes the problem and is working closely with the manufacturer to resolve it. Unfortunately, we cannot give you any resolution time and are sorry for the inconvenience this may cause you.

The workaround is to adjust the definition during the TV start up. It is possible on most television sets.

As discussed this morning with a colleague, you will receive a new TV box for testing.

Please keep us posted.

Kind regards,

amoouses

Thanks for the reply

I agreed with Christopher today to test a new TV Box 2.0 as a last resort, although is this is a systematic problem with all new boxes I am dubious as to whether this will solve anything.

One important point though. What does this mean exactly?

The workaround is to adjust the definition during the TV start up

I'm not going to try and guess what this means, please be more specifc. If possible give and example and pictures.

What does the workaround achieve, does it somehow enable 1080p and how exactly? Etcetera.

amoouses

Dear LeylaG,

I see not response to my question.

To help push you in the right direction for you to form a meaningful answer

Our 4K compliant televison supports HDMI 2.0 on its 4 HDMI interfaces

As such the Televison side of the HDMI interface therefore supports

HDMI

DDC v1

DDC v2

E-DDC and therefore EDID Data structure passing from the Television (host) to the Computer or Swisscom Set top box 2.0 in the case under discussion.

How therefore do you suggest that a particular resolution be applied?

amoouses

Okay the position at 11.24 on Tursday 20150716 is now

- We received another new Swisscom TV 20 televison box

- We installed it

- It too is at hardware revision 5.0

- Guess what, no surprises, it is consistent and is UNABLE to display at HD resolution, I mean the output signal to our 4K HDMI 2.0 TV is still made at 1280 x 720 pixels

- I have redialled Swisscom support and we have agreed to revert my subscription back to Swisscom TV 1.0

- Then I guess I have to monitor these and other forums and/or call technical support and periodically check whether this know problem is resolved.

if anybody at Swisscom has an official trouble ticket number (or whatever you call it) for this issue then posting it here would be useful so when we call Tech Support we can ask if it is fixed by reference to that.

regards

marcus bennett.

PS: I will update the picasa album with screen shots of the 2nd Swisscom 2.0 box delivered showing the same lower resolution by end of today (thursday)

agata_marcus

And so the latest in this unhappy story is

- we have reverted back to the Swisscom TV 1.0

- We also reverted back to our old Casa package but the old speed is now no longer available so we are back on a lower speed, (see following)

- We are prepared to go with the lower speed since we are just waiting for the fix to the poor picture resolution and we want to go back to TV 2.0

AND THE COMPLICATIONS

- So the speed that is reverted is incorrect as mentioned above

- We cant use our old swisscom logon name and I see trouble using the Forum name also. Hmm.

- We were sent a new 12 month contract even though we said that as customers of several years we want to revert back not take out a new contract from which you can't escape etc... So we've had to write a letter of complaint/ disagreement. (We were assured on the phone that Swisscom would not hold us to any new contract, easily said, but what about the costs of upgrading to tv 2.0 from a /new/ contract. we might get penalised there etc).

- There is no mechanism for informing us when the problem will be fixed. So what do I have to do, check the forum each week? Call Swisscom.

OVERALL

I am dumbfounded that Swisscom has set forth a significant advertising campaign for TV 2.0 when as it stands the picture quality is SUB HD

In other words a 1920x1080 signal is sent out in 1280x720 pixel format. it's recevied by a TV panel with resolutio at least 1920x1080 and so you can see that the pixel quality would be worse than feeding a native 1280x720 pixel set.

It's been a lot of hassle for us, numerous telephone calls and we would have been happier to /struggle along/ with TV 2.0 if there could have been an indication of the fix e.g. we commit to fix the problem by August 1 2015. But no such indication could be producted.

Additionally I would say that I / We spoke to many well meaning but technically shallow people and despite asking to be transferred to better than L1 tech support we did not speak to any greatly knowledable person. (example I asked if they knew what HD resolution means in Pixels and they had no clue, example#2 I asked if they new about HDMI protocols for resolution negotiation and they had no clue).

Hmm.

MatthiasM

Dear all

The temporary problem with a maximum resolution of 720p at STB commissioning of new installations has been fixed at 21.07.2015 with the client 1:30:17. As announced in the selfsame contribution in the German forum, the problem was known and it was corrected.

An information to the customers about the rectification of the problem should be based on its open tickets.

We apologize that it has not worked in his case.

Kind regards

MatthiasM

Swisscom

agata_marcus

Mattias,

I read this post earlier but thought I should comment postively. So I am glad to hear that the problem is fixed.

Therefore we will re order Swisscom TV 2.0 since until notice of resolution of the problem we reverted our Internet subscription back to 1.0

In English the words are "What a palava", and clearly we are not done yet. When we have re-upgraded, and received a box with this new firmware level or updated to it, AND things are confirmed good, then we will repost to this form.. of course.

Just to be clear though.

The TV box that we were previously sent was Hardware revision 5.0

It would nice to have your confirmation that firmware 1.30.17 firmware or later is compatible with this Hardware revision 5.0 (i.e. we don't need a later hardware spec box)

agata_marcus

So,

the day has arrived. After backing out our new Internet and TV2.0 subscription back to an inferior Internet and TV1.0, we have heard that the 1280 x 720 pixel resolution issue is definitively fixed, as given by Matthias.

So we believed it, and we have AGAIN sought to upgrade to

a) Faster Fibre Internet (Symmetric up and download speeds)
b) TV 2.0

We ordered the new service on Sunday Night (Aug 16) and very efficiently this Tuesday morning (Aug 18) both the new Internet Router and the TV 2.0 box arrived.

36 overview l.jpg

37 tv20 detail view l.jpg

38 remote control.jpg

So now all appears to be well. (The Internet speed is not yet correct, but we raised a ticket for that).