All OK at UBI? Copping the "Rain in Area" message on ALL channels.

All channels are back now

Something must of went wrong as globecast channels went down aswell.. but all seem to be back on air now

Yep, cool, thanks LAZER. Don't want to miss out on Mega news.

Services have been down for a fair few hours now. Any word on what's happening?

It seems as though the phones at Ubi have gone off the hook (or they're inundated with telephones??????????) - haven't been able to place a call to them at all today.

Got through to them after many attempts. Apparently power outage in their entire building.

Granted generators can't work all day, but I'm shocked such a large organization wouldn't have their own independant redundancy.

Major power supply failure in the building and generators died.

[quote=RATLSNAKE]Got through to them after many attempts. Apparently power outage in their entire building.

Granted generators can't work all day, but I'm shocked such a large organization wouldn't have their own independant redundancy. [/quote]

Thank you Ratlsnake, and Webmaster, for the heads up. I presume no ETA was given on when services would resume? Webmaster, no physical damage to the building or persons, I hope?

Right now at 17:00 there attempting to get the UPS back online. Problem is it also died after the generators (both) died after 15 minutes.

Fox Sports is also in the building and right now all available power is being directed to them.

Hopefully if all goes okay around 17:30 try to fire up all the UBI encoders and fire up the HPAs. These things are notorious for going bang as their power supplies run 24 x 7 and in in rush strains them.

Incidentally the generators did start but stopped soon after and refused to restart.

Commercial power is restored but the UPS is dead and not all the load can bypass it.

As soon as he UPS is fixed, and the HPAs don't go bang it should be okay.

Hello, Webmaster, and thanks again for the information you have imparted to us. Having read your posts, I just switched on the TV - seems to be working, thus far.

Cheers!

Nice!

Disaster recovery is nothing more than best guess, unless you can completely duplicate your facility.

Fox Sports played out backup material as they were also off or a few hours.

Only thing noticed was different programming.

Always feel free to PM me. I was just occupied and unable to get on here earlier.

So Fox sports was also affected, then? I inferred that from your previous posts, but deigned not to hazard an ill-informed guess.

Thank you for your last post as well :-)

You did wonders by informing us :-)

Agreed. Much more detail than UBI gave.

RATLSNAKE,

I no longer frequent this forum as there has been no activity in UBI section.

UBI kept subscribers informed with information which was available and which would be helpful to our subscriber base.

The website had the front page changed with information as soon as the website was restored.

There was also continuos updates on the official UBI Facebook page at www.facebook.com/ubiworldtv.


Regards,
Liski

I was referring to the information provided by the people on the phone. To me it seemed they had received no information other than it was "power related", where as the webmaster had heaps of detail to provide. My own mother suggested why there was nothing on the website (and mind you at this time it was indeed running with no custom message, as she visited it right before calling) and the girl responded "that's a good idea, don't know why this hasn't been done".

RATLSNAKE,

I personally don’t believe there was a need for our Customer Care to go in depth. Their job was to calm the customer due to the rumours and simply advised what was occurring.

The website had the announcement splash from about 10am till about 11pm the same day.


Regards,
Liski

Hi again folks,

Greek channel Mega has been down all day today, any idea when it will come back on?

It's been two days almost now, without Mega, will viewers be recompensed for the downtime?

-edit

er don't worry about the compensation part for the two days, just noticed that today has some extra channels as compo

MEGA is back but someone has screwed up the aspect ratio.

The original image is still 4:3 but has been squashed vertically, so to those thinking it, no it is not widescreen, but a screwed up full-frame image

Hello RATLSNAKE,

I wrote earlier, but my net died. In any case, yep, noticed it came back on during dinner. Hope the borked aspect ratio isn't a permanent thing, like al-jazeera's......

Still screwed up today.

Yeah, and a lot of pauses, too. Hope this gets fixed pronto - this al-jazeera scenario is a nightmare!

The MEGA Cosmos aspect ratio is not permanent.


Regards,
Liski

Hi Liski, thanks for the information. Is al-jazeera to remain in the same ratio, too? Or will it also go back to normal?

Bodie_CI5,

AJE is actually 16:9.


Regards,
Liski

Hi Liski,

For real? How come I can't get it to show as such on my widescreen plasma. Ugh, back to the manual I go

It is not a 16:9 broadcast. It is a 4:3 broadcast with a matte aspect ratio of 1.85:1.

Yeah, I concur, I am unable to get it as 16:9 and I've tried big time, now.

I've noticed a couple times with Mega, when there is a pause, that a classic YouTube type buffering cycle occurs. Is Mega being streamed off the net?

There's nothing to try, it's definitely 4:3 like all other channels. You'll go crazy if you think it's your end.

As far as Mega goes, that is indeed what's been the case for weeks. Haven't you noticed the huge horizontal matte lines? Basically the issue is not on UBI's end to fix, so as a workaround they are broadcasting an internet stream.

The parents called UBI tonight and were told hopefully by Monday it will return via satellite.

Meanwhile Alpha is down, UBI said tonight that IS a local issue they need to fix, but some good news is that MAD World is back.

So...they're getting there I guess.

RATLSNAKE/Eagle7,

I'm happy to advise the signal source of MEGA Cosmos has been corrected.

fyi MEGA Cosmos and quite a lot of other channels are no longer supplied to broadcasters via satellite.



Regards,
Liski

Someone is really "pulling our leg" in here!!

As per the website Lyngsat.com, MEGA Cosmos Australia is still on Intelsat8 !!! Have a look at this link:

http://www.lyngsat.com/tvchannels/gr/Mega-Cosmos-Australia.html

FYI this was recorded on 01/04/12.

Internet streaming broadcasting probably works out cheaper than satellite these days.....which obviously increases profit for some people.
Let the consumer worry about the quality!

Eagle7,

Of course it's on Intelsat 8 as UBI uplinks it to Intelsat 8, this is the satellite which we use to broadcast the UBI Greek service in Australia.

I think you should read my posts again as I mentioned that most broadcasters ("Channels") these days use fibre to contribute and deliver their channels to their clients (eg. UBI).


Regards,
Liski