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24/7 Technical Support

If you’re having problems, we’re here to help. Below are links to solutions to several common questions about Internet and Email. If you have questions about VTelevision, view our VTelevision FAQ page.

Please note: Router Performance Notice

VTel provides an entry-level performance router as a convenience to our customers, one that fits almost all of our customers’ needs.  However, one size does not always fit all: some customers may have specific needs such as capacity or broadcast strength/distance or throughput that our “middle of the road” router can’t meet. If you find our router does not meet your needs, we encourage you to bring your own router to our network to use with our fiber optic network. If you chose to bring your own router to our network, you do not need to pay a monthly modem/router rental fee.
 
Please note that if you bring your own router device we cannot support your internal network, including TV. Our ability to help troubleshoot with a non-VTel router will also be limited.
 

We will never send you an email asking for your account information. This is a popular way that hackers try to get your account information called “phishing”. There is no reason that we will ever ask for your account information. If you do reply to one of these emails, contact us to reset your password.

Universal Public Service Notice

Email Support

As of 10/27/2021 an important change to your authentication experience, so that we may reduce the amount of spam on our servers.

While we understand this change might be unfamiliar or confusing, we would like to let everyone know that the change was required to ensure continued safety and user reliability on our network.  For many years we allowed unauthenticated outgoing emails on our network; however, as time as gone on and users as well as the sheer volume of emails have increased, we felt it necessary and urgent to change this setting. Going forward, all VTel customers now must authenticate to send outgoing email messages.

What does authentication mean? In short, this simply means that the mail server network must register officially back to a secure port on the VTel network. For many customers, it’s only a matter of adding a password and checking ‘My mail server requires authentication’ within the Server Settings options from your email client. For reference, please view our SMTP settings below and applying them to your device(s):

VTel’s SMTP Mail Server is: smtp.vermontel.net. This is the outgoing mail server that your email software uses to send email. The primary port number is 25. If port 25 is in use by another application, an alternative port number of 2025 may be used. A username/password must be entered to continue. 

If you are still experiencing issues after making these changes, please contact our team and we’d be happy to assist with any question or problem you may be experiencing. 

Important Note: you are only using our RoundCube interface to login this information will not apply to you and no changes are required. In other words, if you aren’t using a @vermontel.net or @vtelwireless.com email address on any other device or application, there is no need to take action here. 

  1. Your Username is the short identification name– the part before @vermontel.net

    Email Address is your VTel username followed by the ‘@’ symbol and then vermontel.net

    POP3 Mail Server address is: pop.vermontel.net 

    Port number: 110

    NO SSL/TLS encryption

    This is the incoming server that allows your email software to download your messages from our incoming mail servers to your computer, or other device. In other words, your computer will download the messages from the server and store them on your hard drive.

    IMAP Mail Server address is: imap.vermontel.net 

    Port number: 143

    NO SSL/TLS encryption

    This is the incoming server that allows email software to remotely access your messages on our server without downloading them to your computer or device. Generally we recommend the use of IMAP instead of POP3. IMAP also makes it easier to manage multiple devices with the same email account. This is because the computers or devices are seeing a mirror image of what is stored on our server.

    SMTP Mail Server is: smtp.vermontel.net 

    This is the outgoing mail server that your email software uses to send email.

    Port number: 25

    NO SSL/TLS encryption

    Username/password authentication recommended

    Alternative port number: 2025

    NO SSL/TLS encryption

    Username/password authentication required

    We recommend using this alternative port for all mobile devices such as laptops, tablets, and smart phones

    If you’re experiencing difficulty configuring your external email application to work with your VTel email, please call our tech support at (802) 885-9002. 

The easiest is to use our web-based email client. You can access the webmail system at roundcube.vermontel.net.

Recently changes were made to our outbound mail server so it aggressively filters mail being sent with an IP Address that originates overseas. Any mail sent from a vermontel.net address coming from an overseas IP Address is automatically blocked.

If you are a customer traveling for business or leisure and will need the ability to send email from your vermontel.net email account, please contact tech support at (802) 885-9002 or 888-242-7584 so that the block may be lifted. It’s much like notifying your bank when you are traveling so they can allow your card to work while you are away. We are more than happy to make this change for our customers, simply give us a call.

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Yes we do! We use a system developed by Roaring Penguin. This system prevents viruses and malware that are attached to emails from getting to your inbox. It does not provide virus protection for your computer that could be encountered while visiting websites.  

Log in to your Roaring Penguin account here, or learn more about it in the User’s Guide here.

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NEW! As of March 28, 2021 at 2pm, SpamTitan is VTel’s new anti-spam partner. 

For a quick reference guide, click here to download a PDF.

IMPORTANT: Our Roaring Penguin provider has been discontinued as of March 28, 2021. The old Roaring Penguin website will be active for a short time further, but should only be used as an “informational” reference. New anti-spam filtering has started to redirect to SpamTitan as of 03/28/2021 at 2pm.

Notification

Every day Roaring Penguin sends VTel users an Anti-Spam notification. This notification shows what has been quarantined in the last 24 hours, since the last notification. By default the notification only includes a maximum of 40 entries. There are several different formats this notification can be sent in. The format can be changed by going to http://spam.vermontel.net/, signing in with your email address and password, then going to Preferences → Notification, select your desired format from the Notification Type drop-down → then hit the [Submit Changes] button at the bottom.

Notification Types

HTML with Links: This is the most used format because it has links to let you manipulate the quarantined emails. At the bottom of this format is a link to the quarantine, which will require your email address and password to log in.

Pending Messages

  • Date: The date and time the email was quarantined
  • Subject: This is a view of the email’s subject line.
  • Country: This is the Country where the email originates from
  • Score: This is the spam score the filter has given the email. The score is based on a variety of different things. The filter looks at each email for traditional, widely-used spam techniques, and scores it accordingly. By default the minimum spam score is set to 5, so anything below that is not considered spam.
  • Action: This is what you would like to do with the email:
    • Accept: This selection pushes the email from the quarantine to your inbox. It does not create a rule.
    • Reject: This selection rejects the message, removing it from your quarantine but not allowing it into your inbox. This does not create a rule.
    • Always Allow Sender: This will always allow this sender to your email.
    • Always Block Sender: This will always block the sender. Not allowing them into your email.

Brief Notification: This is plain text with a link to the Quarantine at the top. The links on the Sender line will open a new email addressed to that sender.

Detailed Notification: This is plain text with a link to the Quarantine at the top. The links on the Sender line will open a new email addressed to that sender.

Detailed Notification

Clickable Webform: This format is very useful, but it may not work in every email Client. This format is just like the HTML with links format, but it also includes an ‘Action Column’, which is useful for making many selections at once. You can make every selection you’d like using the ‘Action’ column, and when you are satisfied with all the changes click the ‘Submit’ button at the bottom, which submits all your selections at once.

Clickable Webform

Accessing the Quarantine

To log in to your quarantine go to http://spam.vermontel.net/ and use you email address and password to log in. Be sure to enable cookies on your web-browser if they are not already enabled. When you log in the page it opens on is your quarantine page: b

Quarantine

The quarantine page is very similar to the HTML email notification, except that there are a couple more selections that can be made here that can be found in Status and Action column. The additional selection are as follows:

  • Always Allow Domain: Always allowing a domain is different than allowing a sender. Let’s take the email address ‘bobby34@emailprovider.net’ for example. If you always allowed that sender it would allow bobby34 into your inbox every time. If you were to always allow the domain for bobby34@emailprovider.net that would allow emailprover.net through every time, so any email address ending in @emailprovider.net would be allowed into your inbox. This is useful for such things like weather alerts from weather.com.
  • Reject and Report Phish/Fraud: This selection can be made if you see an email that you believe to be particularly malicious. If reported Roaring Penguin will take a look at the email and the sender and act accordingly.
  • Block Domain: The opposite of allowing a domain.
  • Side Bar:
    • Pending: These are the emails that are quarantined and awaiting your decision.
    • Note: you do not have to make a selection for every entry.
    • Spam: This is a list of 100% verified spam emails. The scores on these emails usually exceed 2000.
    • Non-Spam: This is a list of emails that were quarantined due to various reasons, but are not typical spam. These usually score under 10, but over 5.
    • All: All the emails.
    • Specific Incident: Using an Incident ID (every email is given one, can be found by clicking on the time it was quarantined) you can bring up a specific incident to see what happened with it.
    • Search: This searches the entire quarantine. Even emails that were quarantined before.
  • Reject/Accept/ and Do Noting to all: At the top of the quarantine page there are 3 icons: a blue one with a question mark in it, a green one with a check mark, and a red one with an x in it. The blue on sets all emails on the page you are viewing (50 emails) to do nothing. The green one sets them all to Accept, and the red one sets them all to Reject. Also there is a ‘Reject All as Spam’ button that will reject all t he emails and train them as spam.
  • Note: Don’t forget to click ‘Submit Changes’ on either the top or bottom of the page to finalize your selections.
  • Links on the Quarantine Page:
    • Date: Clicking the time in the date column will bring you into the Incident Screen on that specific email. From here you can see a number of things including why the filter scored it like it did.
    • Subject: Clicking this will bring you into a preview of the actual email. Any external images will be blocked, but if the email includes text you will be able to see it here.
    • From: Clicking on the Sender’s username will bring you into a screen which allows you to create a rule for that specific sender. Clicking on the sender’s domain will do the same, but the rule is referring to the sender’s domain, not the sender itself. Also the sender’s country of origin is listed here in the form of a flag. If you hover your mouse over the flag it will tell you what country it belongs to.
    • Relay: Clicking on this will give you information about the origin of the specific email.

Configuring your Spam Filter

Home

Very similar to the Quarantine screen, but from here you can add email addresses and domains to your Accept and Reject list by manually typing them in. At the top of the page is the ‘Accept and Always Reject List’. Simply click on the drop-down and select what you’d like to do, either ‘Always Accept’ or ‘Always Reject’, then type the email address or domain in the field to the right of the drop-down and click ‘Add’.

Note: You can view every rule created by going to ‘Rules’ (from the black bar at the top of the screen) and selecting either ‘Senders’ or ‘Domains’ from the left-hand menu, whichever one corresponds to the rule you are looking for.

Rules

This section is everything to do with the rules you have added or want to add. There are many options on the left-hand side of this section, but we are going to cover the ones you are most likely to use.

  • Senders: This is a list of all the rules that have been created for your filter regarding specific senders. You can filter by the Action from the ‘Action’ drop-down. Or by entering the specific email address in the ‘Sender’ field. If you type an address in the field titles ‘Enter a specific Sender’s email address you can create a rule for that address. Just search it then choose the desired Action. You can also click the small ‘Show Changes’ link which will list the changes that have been made in chronological order, so you can see when you’ve made certain changes.
  • Domains: This list is exactly like the sender list but it refers to rules created for domains specifically. Can be manipulated the same way the Sender Section can be.
  • Countries: From here you can create and view rules regarding entire countries. Example: if we wanted to create a rule that made it difficult for emails coming from Qatar to get into our inbox we would set it up like this or something similar: Under Country select Qatar. QA (the abbreviation for Qatar) will appear in the small square to the left of the drop-down where you selected the country, then put a numerical value into the Score field. Whatever number you put here (negatives work as well) will be added or subtracted from the email’s score. By default the filter automatically rejects any email scoring over 2000, so lets put 2000 in the Score field. The comment field can be left empty, it is optional, but it can be useful to remind ourselves why we created the rule. For this one I put ‘Country rule for Qatar’.
  • Custom Rules: Possibly the most useful section of the Rules. From here you can create specific customized rules. For example the email account I am using to write this gets many emails with the subject line ‘EMPLOYMENT OFFER’. It’s clearly bogus and we don’t want to see it anymore, but the sender is never the same and neither is the domain making it impossible to just block the sender or domain. So this is what we do: Select ‘Subject’ for the ‘Field’ column. The ‘Field’ Column represents what field of the email the rule is made to look at. In this case it’s the subject line. For relation we can select ‘is’ because the subject line is EMPLOYMENT OFFER and never changes. For ‘Data’ we will type ‘employment offer’ (it’s not case sensitive). Put 2000 into the score, since we know the filter automatically rejects anything scoring above 2000. We leave expiry blank because it’s a permanent rule, and we can leave comment empty if we want. Then click ‘Add Rule’ and the rule will appear. Now any email that comes in where the subject line is ‘employment offer’ will have 2000 added to the score, automatically rejecting it.
    • Relation Field
      • Contain: When the ‘Data’ is contained in the Field. For example: if there is an offensive word in a subject line, but the subject line is not always the same you could make the ‘Field’ the subject line and put the offensive word in data. You would set the ‘Relation’ as contains because the word is contained in the subject line each time.
      • Starts With: The field starts with whatever is in the ‘Data’ field.
      • Ends With: The field ends with whatever is in the ‘Data’ field.
      • Does not Contain: The field does not contain whatever is in the ‘Data’ field.
      • Is: The field is exactly what is in the ‘Data’ field.

Preferences

This section is where most of the filter settings are made. Again I will point out the most-used parts of this section.

  • Preferences: Some miscellaneous settings. Some useful ones are ‘Number of entries per page’ which is how many emails are displayed on each page of the quarantine. The default is 50 and it can be set all the way up to 1000.
    • ‘Help level’ and ‘Hide help by Default’: There is a help menu in the upper-right hand corner that is minimized by default. If you set ‘Hide help by Default’ to no then submit your change, you will see a nice little help menu show up in most sections of the spam filter.
  • Opt in/Out: If you simply do not want spam filtering enabled you can Opt out, or opt back in if you’d like to reverse that rule. Without spam filtering you will receive every email addressed to you, regardless of who sends it.
  • Quarantine Settings: The first part of this section titled ‘Filter Settings’ will be where most selections are made here. Some useful ones:
    • Automatically reject messages scoring more than this amount: By default it is set to 2000, so anything that scores over 2000 is automatically rejected by the spam filter.
    • Auto-reject messages scoring more than this amount without creating an incident: By default set to 10,000. Anything that scores over 10,000 is automatically rejected and no incident is created.
    • Spam Threshold: By default set to 5. Anything scoring above a 5 is marked as spam. The lower the score you use here, the stricter the filter will be.
  • Notification: This section is everything to do with the notification email that gets sent out daily. This includes the frequency that it gets sent, what is contained in it, and wheat address it gets sent to. Here are some useful settings in this section:
    • Do not include messages scoring above this threshold in notifications: By default this is set to 2000, which means that any message that was quarantined and scored over 2000 will not be included in the daily notification, but it will still be quarantined. You can set this number to anything you’d like.
    • Notification Times: From here you can check off what time of the day and what day of the week the notification is sent. Note: you can select multiple times.
    • Send Pending Notification Now: At the bottom of this page is a button that will send the pending notification email.

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Router Support

* We highly recommend downloading our free Command IQ mobile app to update your Wi-Fi settings, including your Wi-Fi name and password, as well as the general management of your Wi-Fi admin. By downloading the app, you can avoid having to use the interface for most tasks. The Command IQ mobile app is available on the App Store & Google Play Store.

Open your web browser (e.g. Chrome, Firefox, Opera or any other browser)

  • Type 192.168.1.1 (the default IP to access the admin interface) in the address bar of your internet browser to access the router’s web-based user interface.
  • You should see 2 text fields where you can enter a username and a password.
  • Check the bottom of your router. There you will find your login credentials. If not then have a look at the manual of your router.
  • Enter the username & password, hit “Enter” and now you should see the control panel of your router. Your default admin account credentials will be on the bottom of your GigaSpire device.
Changing Wi-Fi Name or Password:

Advanced users may need to access the Embedded Web Interface (EWI) to configure features such as port forwarding or LAN IP addressing. To access the EWI, you can use the default admin account using the credentials printed on the label on the bottom of the GigaSpire. However, if you used the CommandIQ mobile app to change your Wi-Fi password, then it also will have changed the admin password for the EWI.

To log in to the Actiontec router, you must first be connected to the WiFi network of the router,  or a direct ethernet connection to one of the 4 LAN ports on the router. Then, open an internet browser and type the following address in to the address/URL field of the browser:

https://192.168.0.1

Username: admin

Password:  The password is the MAC address of your router in all capital characters with NO colons. This can be found on the label of the router.  For example, 40:8B:07 should be entered as 408B07…etc.

Changing the WiFi name or password:

Once you are logged in to the router, select the “Wireless Setup” option. Now you are on the setup page,  option 2 is where you can change the name of your network. The name cannot contain spaces. If necessary, you may add a dash or ‘underscore’ character.

To change the password, find option 5 on the wireless setup page. You can type a custom password, but it must be a minimum of 8 characters in length.

Actiontec Router Gateway

Once  the desired changes have been made, you can press “Apply” at the bottom of the page, and the changes will be saved.

  1. To log in to the Pace router,  you must first be connected to the WiFi network of the router,  or a direct ethernet connection to one of the 4 LAN ports on the router. Then, open an internet browser and type the following address in to the address/URL field of the browser:

    https://192.168.1.1

    Password: The password is the MAC address of your router in all capital characters with NO colons. This can be found on the label of the router. For example, 60:FE:20 should be entered as 60FE20…etc

    Changing the WiFi name or password:

    Once you are logged in to the router, select Settings > LAN > WiFi. On the wireless radio configuration page, the “Primary network name (SSID)” is the name of the WiFi network which can be changed by deleting the text that is there and typing in the desired SSID.

    To change the WiFi password, select “Set custom encryption key” and type the desired password in the blank space. Note that the password will be hidden, so make sure to enter it correctly. It must be a minimum of 8 characters in length.

    Pace Router Gateway

    Once you have made the desired changes, scroll down the page and click ‘Save’.

    Pace Router save

    You will need to enter the password, and then you will see confirmation the changes were successful.

  1. To log in to the Technicolor router, you must first be connected to the WiFi network of the router,  or a direct ethernet connection to one of the 4 LAN ports on the router. Then, open an internet browser and type the following address in to the address/URL field of the browser:

    https://192.168.1.1

    Username: admin

    Password: The admin password for the Technicolor router can be found on the label of the router, and it is labeled as “Admin password”. This should be entered in all capital characters.

    Changing the WiFI name or password:

    Once you are logged in to the router,  you will see an array of ‘boxes’ which contain various settings. Click on “Wireless” in the upper right corner of the page. When the options load, on the left you will see “Access points” for the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz networks; select the name of the network you wish to modify. SSID name can be modified to change the name of the network. You can also change the wireless password from the same menu. 

    Once you have made the desired changes, you can click ‘Save’. NOTE: You may see a warning or error such as “an error occurred” You can disregard this, and your changes should have been saved.

Internet Support

Check and ensure that your router is powered on. The lights on the front of your router should be illuminated. Take appropriate steps to ensure the router can get power from a surge protector, like checking the power adapter to make sure nothing is disconnected, unplugged, or damaged.

NOTE: If your home is experiencing a utility power outage, the VTel fiber optic system with the CyberPower battery unit is designed to shut the internet connection OFF to save power for the telephone in the case of a utility outage. If you have a generator, the CyberPower unit must receive 60 Hz utility power to charge the battery otherwise your internet is not guaranteed to work in the case of a utility power failure or while on generator fallback. Please refer to our battery information page for more information about the battery.

  • Try rebooting your router, by disconnecting the power cord from the back of the router itself, (It is not necessary to unplug the power adapter from the surge protector) then wait 60 seconds, and plug It back in. The service should return within a few minutes.
  • Ensure that the internet line which comes from the wall jack or through the floor/wall is connected securely to the Internet/WAN port on your router. You may also try disconnecting and re connecting both ends of that cable. This cable should NOT be plugged in to any of the LAN ports on your router. Also note that the color of the cable is relatively meaningless.
  • Try connecting to your router directly to the LAN ports via an Ethernet cable connection. If this works, it may suggest a problem with the WiFi signal in your home, or possible equipment failure.
  • Try bypassing your router by connecting directly to the incoming line or wall jack. You should be able to acquire an internet connection directly from the ONT outside. If this does not work, there may be a larger problem and you should contact us so we can help determine the problem.
  • If you are connecting to the WiFi, ensure that you are within range of the wireless router. There are many environmental and situational factors that can affect the signal strength and performance of your WiFi connection.
  • If you have a landline telephone, please check for dial tone. If there is no dial tone, there is a larger problem at your residence and you should contact us to help resolve that problem.
  • If you find that any of the information here is not helpful, please feel free to call or email our support team, as we have more tools available to test your line and are eager to assist in further troubleshooting.
  • Are some devices working while others are not? Take note that your router may have a certain limit regarding the number of devices that can connect wirelessly. The Actiontec  and Pace router which VTel provides,  for example, have a limit that is about 15 devices. The router may decide to kick some devices off to allow the other connections to work. You may want to try “forgetting” and then joining the network on the affected device.
  • If you are experiencing poor performance or slow measured speed, take note that while VTel does advertise and offer 1 GBp/s service up to the home, to gain the full benefit of the gigabit service you must be directly connected to the router with an Ethernet cable. For WiFi connections typical of the routers that VTel provides, it is perfectly normal to receive between 10 and 80 Mbp/s download speeds over a 2.4 GHz wireless connection, however in most cases that should be enough to stream, browse, or game on multiple devices. The absolute best and most consistent way to receive the strongest connection is with an Ethernet cable.
  • Is your connection dropping or “spotty”? There are many factors that can contribute to poor WiFi connectivity and performance; the most common being interference caused by factors such as other WiFi networks, your microwave, refrigerator, dimmer switches, cordless telephone handsets, baby monitors, Bluetooth enabled devices, and the construction materials in the home like masonry and concrete. For these reasons it is most ideal to have your router placed in an open and central location of the home.  A potential solution may be to add an extender/booster or additional router to your network to ensure you have full home coverage.
 

VTelevision Support

The information displayed here is intended to assist in resolving the most common TV troubles that are encountered. VTelevision is an IPTV service which means the internet and your router are required for the TV to operate, and we suggest approaching TV problems by first ensuring that your internet connection is working. Once you verify that you have a working internet connection through your router, you may refer to the steps below if you are still encountering a problem.

VTel provided routers may require additional equipment, the Cisco VEN501 access point, attached to your router to provide the wireless signal to the Cisco 7105 WiFi set top box. This will be referred to as the “Cisco access point”. There is a small switch on the back of the access point that should be set to ‘AP’ mode.

NOTE: If you are using a router that is not provided by VTel, it must have multicast IPTV capabilities such as IGMP snooping, and IGMP proxy for the television to function. Please be aware that we cannot provide full support for television problems if you decide to use your own router.

Not seeing your problem listed here?  Many problems not listed in this section can be solved simply by rebooting your router, Cisco access point, and then the Cisco set top box in that order. Remove the small, round power cord from the back of the devices, wait 10 seconds, then plug them back in. You can also reboot the set top box through the VTelevision menu on your remote: Press MENU then select Settings > Restart system, and select ‘Restart’ when prompted. 

The Cisco remote is not working

  • VTel uses the Cisco AT6400 universal remote, which requires 2 AA batteries to operate. If you are having trouble, try replacing the batteries with non-generic, name brand batteries.
  • The remote is always set up to control the set top box functions like channel, guide, recording features, etc. If you wish to program the remote to control the power of your television set, please refer to our programming guide

  • If the remote is still not working, try using a remote from another set-top box (if you have more than one).

If your remote has stopped functioning, is damaged, or lost the replacement cost is $20

The screen says “Press OK to watch TV”. When I press OK, nothing happens

Point the remote at the television set top box, and press the STB mode button at the top of your Cisco remote control. Then, try again. You can also try pushing the OK button on the front of the set top box.

The TV guide and the guide button are not working

Point the remote at the television set top box, and press the STB mode button at the top of your Cisco remote control. Then, try again. You can also try pushing the MENU button on the set top box to access the guide and verify function of the set top box.

The recorded TV and DVR features are not working

First try rebooting the DVR receiver, which is the Cisco model 7150. It is also physically larger than the other TV set top boxes, and must be wired to your network with an Ethernet cable.  Then, reboot the other set top boxes and check again. It is a common occurrence that the DVR and other set top boxes lose communication, especially after something like a power outage.

My recorded programs are experiencing problems

Many of the problems you may encounter with a particular recorded program such as the program skipping or freezing on playback can be caused by the channel that was recorded. For example, if channel 3 had a signal loss while a program was recording from that channel, it will be reflected on the recording. There may also be a problem present with your DVR equipment, and you should contact technical support directly for more assistance

  • If certain recorded programs are missing or otherwise affected by problems, one common cause can be the hard drive space on the DVR running too low. The DVR can store up to about 80 hours of HD recordings, or about 300 recordings total. You can check the DVR hard drive space by pressing MENU > Settings > General > System information > System resources. ‘Disk usage’ will show a percentage remaining
  • If you are experiencing a more specific set of problems, please contact technical support so we can assist you directly

HDCP error message

HDCP is a protocol which means High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection, and it is an anti-copyright and anti-piracy security standard. If you see an error message relating to this, try checking the connection of the HDMI cable from the Cisco set top box to your television and make sure both ends are connected securely. Then, try rebooting the Cisco set top box. If you regularly encounter this problem, there may be a problem with the HDMI cable or your television.

The television displays a ‘No signal’ message or similar

First, try rebooting the Cisco set top box. If nothing changes, make sure that your television is set to the correct mode, source, or input. If your set top box is connected with an HDMI cable, your television needs to be set to an HDMI mode or input. When the set top box is connected with component or video cables, your television may need to be set to the video, component, or A/V source, mode, or input. These settings can be changed using the buttons on the TV or the remote from the TV manufacturer.

TV image is stretched or distorted

Start by ensuring the Cisco set top box is set to the correct aspect ratio. To do this, press “Menu” and choose “Settings”. Select “Television” and then “Screen aspect ratio and high definition”. Select the setting that suits your television, then test will be offered for each setting so you may choose the option which looks appropriate. If you are unsure which option applies to your television, please refer
to the specifications of your television. If you still cannot get the image formatted, please refer to the televisions own menu for additional formatting options

There are also instances where a “border” may appear on the edges of your screen– take note that a handful of channels and programs that VTel provides are not formatted for HD and will not fit your television screen.

A message appears that says “OK connect?”

This screen appears and indicates the Cisco set top box is requesting to be paired or connected to the Cisco access point, or Technicolor router. You must press the OK button on the set top box, and then you will have about 2 minutes to press the WPS button on the Cisco access point or Technicolor router. In cases where there may be a larger problem, you may see a red ‘X’ appear on the screen; in which case you should contact technical support directly for more assistance.

The television displays an error that says “Television signal has been lost”

This error can occur when the set top box loses communications with the internet or Cisco access point. You may find that simply changing the channel up or down may solve it. Otherwise, if this becomes a recurring problem for you, try rebooting all devices as stated in the beginning of the VTelevision support section. If basic troubleshooting does not solve this problem, please contact us directly so we can provide more assistance.

The screen is frozen on the VTelevision farm and cloud landscape scene

Check to verify the internet connectivity at your residence, and try rebooting the affected set top boxes. If you have more than one set top box, check to see if the problem is occurring on more than one. If the problem does occur on more than one set, we encourage you to contact us so we may assist with more direct troubleshooting.

The television image is freezing or “pixelating”

If you are experiencing this, the television picture will often briefly pause or freeze, or if you are seeing the image break, blur, or “pixelate” which it is commonly referred to as. Various factors such as sun spots, weather, wireless signal interference, channel provider, internet or equipment problems, or degraded wiring in the home can all contribute to this problem. When you are experiencing these problems, we encourage you to call and work with us on an individual basis so we may assist in troubleshooting.

When reporting this problem, it is imperative for technical support to know the following information:

  • The exact channel number on which the problem occurs
  • Time of day
  • If the problem occurs on more than one set top box
  • If the problem is consistent or sporadic
  • How long the problem has occurred
  • Troubleshooting actions which have been taken, if any
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