Energy Saving Light Entertainment no Joke for Cable TV
By Steve Hill
I have a Virgin Media cable television supply into my bedroom and in the past couple of months it started acting up! Suddenly the channels would change by themselves or the remote seemed to stop working altogether, the next minute everything would be fine, then the set top box would switch off!
I was about to call Virgin Media when I read this article by Graham Snowdon in The Guardian:
If your television or cable
equipment seems to have a life of its own, why not get rid of your
lightbulbs? It might sound like a joke, but that’s the advice Virgin
Media gave to Emma and Alistair Clements when their cable TV
receiver started behaving oddly.
The couple, who have two young
daughters, have been Virgin Media TV subscribers since
moving to their home in Carshalton, Surrey, in 2007. They had no
problems with the service until a few months ago, when they first
noticed their Virgin Media set-top box, manufactured by Samsung, started
randomly changing channels and switching itself on and off.
“At
first we thought it was the children’s sticky fingers on the remote
control and that the buttons were sticking,” Emma says. “But the novelty
soon began to wear off.”
Emma called Virgin Media customer
services, which promptly dispatched a technician to examine the box.
“Before he’d even seen anything, the engineer asked us if we used
Philips energy-saving light bulbs,” she says. “He changed the box
anyway, but said it would probably keep happening.”
Unfortunately,
the engineer’s prophecy proved correct. “With the new box, it was
worse, if anything,” Emma says.
The Clements family had only one
Philips energy-saving bulb in their living room, in a lamp sitting on a
side table about 12 feet away from the TV.
A Philips Electronics
spokeswoman confirmed the problem was known to the company, but
expressed surprise users of its bulbs still experienced it. “Some very
early compact fluorescent lamps, shortly after starting, could cause
interference with TV controls due to the frequency of operation of the
bulb and when placed near a TV,” the spokeswoman said. “The frequency
was quickly changed many years ago and we have had no recent reported
incidents.”
Following Guardian Money’s intervention, Philips’s
customer relations team contacted the family and asked them to return
the offending bulb so it could properly analyse the problem, but said it
wanted to monitor the issue on “a case-by-case basis”. It advises other
customers experiencing similar problems to contact
its online support team. Virgin Media also acknowledged the problem
but laid the blame squarely at the door of the bulb manufacturer. “This
is an old problem,” its spokesman said. “Some compact fluorescent bulbs
flicker at such an imperceptible rate that they can interfere with
infrared equipment. What our customer care chap said is kind of correct,
but it’s not the full answer. You can still use energy-saving bulbs,
but we recommend trying an alternative brand.”
Removing the
offending lightbulb from the living room has helped, says Alistair, but
the main light in his hallway still causes the set-top box to function
erratically, despite being in a different room. “It’s Virgin’s box that
causes the problem as much as the bulbs,” he claims. “Energy-saving
light bulbs aren’t cheap. If we need to replace them all, why can’t
Virgin Media pay for them?”
The cable provider’s spokesman denied
the problem happened any more frequently with its Samsung boxes than
others, but a browse through specialist cable TV forums online suggests
it may be a more common issue than Virgin thinks – or cares to admit.
On
cableforum.co.uk,
a poster called Organ Grinder writes: “My light switch is controlling
my Virgin TV box each time it is used … anyone have any idea what is
going on? Is my flat haunted? … I don’t think it’s worth calling Virgin,
as I understandably expect them to think I am raving mad.” Monkey2468, a
poster who lists his occupation as a technician, replied: “It will be
energy-saving light bulbs. Seen it several times before with Samsung
set-top boxes.”
In the meantime, be it the fault of the box or the
lightbulb, the Clements family just wants its TV to work properly
again. “It would be very nice to get it sorted,” says Alistair. “Virgin
Media isn’t particularly cheap and if we can’t get it fixed soon, it
might be time to switch provider.”
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