Ignite TV Box Connection Nightmare

[kingcobra]

I've never posted on here but wanted to come on to share this story as I have seen a lot of frustrating posts on this issue and aside from the normal things to do a lot of people have not been able to get help.

One of my TV boxes had been on the fritz for a while, where I'd have to unplug it every few days, then every day, and lately this turned to several times a day, and finally getting to the point where this became a waste of time and the best I could do other than the thing hanging in the boot-up sequence is it coming online for 10 seconds and then go black.

I tried unplugging the tv box for various amounts of time, rebooting the modem in tandem with this, restarting the gateway, praying, nothing helped.  I have 5 devices on this, all 4 have worked perfectly including a TV box in another room, this one sits right beside the modem in my office so distance isn't an issue.  The app always shows the other 4 devices connected but my troublesome box is never connected on this thing.

I was at my wits end with this, do I chat with a tech agent from Rogers again where if the canned responses don't fix it they will want to send a tech in person?  I work from home during these hours and can't have a technician fiddle around while I'm working, I need to stay online without interruption.  I seemed to be down to waiting until my next vacation in October, two months of no TV in my office where I spend pretty much all my time, wife watches the other set.

I was just about to give up, and I noticed that on the app there is a feature where you can assign your devices to a network.  None were assigned so I assigned them all to "household."  I still have no idea what this means but when you have a connectivity issue this maddening you try anything.

This in itself did nothing but I decided to give this all one last shot.  Unplugged and re-plugged the modem and then the TV box, nothing, then with this done I restarted the gateway, and unplugged and re-plugged the tv box one more time, and I've been on now for over 2 days from 10 seconds max before this, with 9 times out of 10 freezing before you ever get there.

I don't know if this will help anyone else but to recap, make sure everything is on the same network, power cycle the modem, power cycle the tv box, restart the gateway, and power cycle the tv box one more time.  The only issue I have left is a channel dropping but you just change to a different channel and it comes back to life, I've had this issue for some time but it's only a relatively minor nuisance and other than that I have come back from the dead!

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@kingcobra  Are you using the Rogers-provided equipment for Wi-Fi connectivity (Ignite Gateway with optional Pods) or are you running on your own network hardware or have other 3rd-party hardware in the mix?

If you have your Ignite set-top box connected through any 3rd-party network/Wi-Fi hardware, there are a number of things which could (and will) cause your set-top box to constantly lose network connectivity.  (Range extenders can be problematic; so can running with your own router (with the Ignite Gateway in bridge mode) if you don't have things configured in the right way.)

If you have Ignite Pods, you can also run into stability issues if you have the Pod installed in a bad location, and/or if the Pod gets overloaded.

Have you tried exchanging the problematic set-top box with another one in your home, that is stable, to see whether it still loses connectivity?

[Biollw]

And I might suggest that if the tv box is right nest to the modem, use hard wired instead of wireless connection. Piece of cat5 from the tv box to the modem and try that. No change needed, just plug and go.

[kingcobra · Accepted solution]

This is all Rogers equipment, with no changes in anything since I've had this gear.  No pods.  Used to work great, first few years, last few months this one set top box which has been getting worse to the point that I need to spend an hour to get TV for a minute or two.  Box rarely connects to the gateway, and when it does, the TV box quickly freezes up and then you have to power down the modem and the box just to be greeted with another freeze.

I thought I might have resolved this when I put up the original post, which meant it was on for a couple hours instead of a few minutes.  Sadly though, that didn't fix it, but I'm a lot more hopeful now. 

I was down to trying this or if not I'm not going to have TV for at least another month when I go on vacation and can have a tech person come.  So here's what I did.  Unplugged the modem and also disconnnected the coax for 10 min.  Then I hit the WPS button, hadn't tried that before or even known what this button does, some guy on Youtube explained it, and now I log into my app and see the thing is connected to the gateway (been a long time since I've seen that).  So one problem down, one to go, as the tv box is still freezing as usual after an unplug.  

So then, down to my last hope, I unplugged both the power cable and the HDMI cable from the box.  10 minutes later I plugged everything back in and it's been 12 hours now and everything is working perfectly.

I really appreciate the idea of using a cable to hard wire the box, wasn't aware you could do that, I at least have another thing to try as this box sits a foot away from the modem and while I'd have to buy a cable it would be worth a few bucks if needed.

[kingcobra]

Sure enough, the problem ended up happening again, so I bought an ethernet cable and to no surprise this resolved it.  TV box has something wrong with its wi-fi antenna, won't connected or stay connected for very long, it's hard wired now and is always on.  I read so many posts with people with one box that has connectivity issues, this won't be a solution if the box is in another room but it sure worked out great for this box 1 foot from the modem.  The nightmare is over, thanks again for the solution!