TV keeps freezing - Fios One Mini
MarkL24
Enthusiast - Level 2

I have Fios One TV and internet. Got it installed about 2 months ago. My router (G3100) and main STB are on my 1st floor in the front of the house and my fios one mini STB is upstairs in my bedroom which is in the back of the house.

When watching TV upstairs in the bedroom, the picture freezes every 25-30 seconds. The problem has been going on for a few weeks now intermittently. At first I thought it was only at night (bc that’s when I mainly watch TV in the bedroom), but I occasionally notice it during the day as well. The mini STB is connected via coax. 

I’ve called Verizon support and gone through 1-2 hours of trouble shooting (rebooting the box, them telling me they’re testing things on their end..). But no avail. Sometimes rebooting the router helps but recently it hasn’t and it’s a pain to go downstairs just to do that.

Any ideas on how to resolve? I may try and move the router to an upstairs bedroom to see if anything changes (even though I don’t think the Wi-Fi should impact this at all). My concern is I want the strongest possible Wi-Fi on my 1st floor where my wife and I work... and I want it to reach down to my basement and out to my patio (it currently does).

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Re: TV keeps freezing - Fios One Mini
MK72
Enthusiast - Level 1

Had similar problems with Fios TV One at house we moved to four months ago. There is one main DVR With coax connecting from the new Fios router in basement (with a MoCA 2.0 splitter running coax Cable to router and to Fios One dvr; one client set-top box with coax on main floor (and a fios wifi extender on second floor). From the get go, we noticed cable tv programs freeze up, or Netflix through Fios not connect or freeze, or On Demand menu not loading, on demand movies freezing. Picture quality was unaffected. At first I thought it was only the client box. Rebooting / trying to reconnect worked for a few minutes. ONT is outdoors on side of house. I noticed that two coax cables run from the ONT, a pre-existing black coax cable from an earlier installation, and the new coax cable from the Fios service upgrade when we moved in. 

I called VZ and went through troubleshooting, swapping dvr and client on the two floors, to no avail. They suggested replacing the coax cables, but I wasn’t ready for that step. As it happened I had an extra MoCA 2.0 splitter from our previous-house Fios setup. There was an old splitter rated for ?5-1000MHz outside of the house. I replaced it with the VZ MoCA 2.0 splitter (rated to > 5000Mhz), and voila, problem seems solved. Cable programs and on demand stuff has been working smoothly for a few days now.It all came down to a splitter mismatch (the old one was not up to spec), so if you have more than one splitter in your house, I would suggest trying that. 

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Re: TV keeps freezing - Fios One Mini
clem21
Community Leader
Community Leader

@MarkL24 wrote:

I have Fios One TV and internet. Got it installed about 2 months ago. My router (G3100) and main STB are on my 1st floor in the front of the house and my fios one mini STB is upstairs in my bedroom which is in the back of the house.

When watching TV upstairs in the bedroom, the picture freezes every 25-30 seconds. The problem has been going on for a few weeks now intermittently. At first I thought it was only at night (bc that’s when I mainly watch TV in the bedroom), but I occasionally notice it during the day as well. The mini STB is connected via coax. 

I’ve called Verizon support and gone through 1-2 hours of trouble shooting (rebooting the box, them telling me they’re testing things on their end..). But no avail. Sometimes rebooting the router helps but recently it hasn’t and it’s a pain to go downstairs just to do that.

Any ideas on how to resolve? I may try and move the router to an upstairs bedroom to see if anything changes (even though I don’t think the Wi-Fi should impact this at all). My concern is I want the strongest possible Wi-Fi on my 1st floor where my wife and I work... and I want it to reach down to my basement and out to my patio (it currently does).


If the mini is truly connected via coax, there is no reason for the picture to break up. Check in the menu on the mini and make sure it is really connected via coax. Next replace all the splitters in the system with MOCA 2.0 certified splitters and check all the coax connections. Hooking it up with coax is one of the best ways to do it, provided the coax is in good condition and the correct splitters are used.

Re: TV keeps freezing - Fios One Mini
MarkL24
Enthusiast - Level 2

Thanks a lot for your response. The Mini is hooked up using a coax cable and I’ve checked multiple times in the settings to make sure it didn’t somehow switch to WiFi. 

I recently moved to the home that I’m having this issue in... so I’m not 100% familiar with how the wiring is run behind the walls. I guess I need to try and find out. There was just a coax jack in the wall of the bedroom that the Fios install tech screwed the coax cable into. I’ve tried switching coax cables from the wall to the mini box. 

It’s so odd that the problem only occurs 99.9% at night. I can’t get over that. It was happening last night when I made my original post... and then I tested it this morning and it was working perfectly. It doesn’t make sense to me. If the wiring was bad or there was a faulty splitter somewhere, I’m not sure how it would ever work properly. Also my TV connected to my main STB in the living room doesn’t have this issue.

One other random thought. I don’t have DVR service. However, Verizon sent me some notice saying they were giving me like a 3 month free trial. I didn’t want it.. but there was no way for me to accept or deny it. Could it be possible that the DVR service is running in the background and if the WiFi signal is weak (also seems to get weaker at night - no idea why)... that could cause the box to freeze? I may be way off but I’m trying to think of any/all options.

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Re: TV keeps freezing - Fios One Mini
clem21
Community Leader
Community Leader

@MarkL24 wrote:

Thanks a lot for your response. The Mini is hooked up using a coax cable and I’ve checked multiple times in the settings to make sure it didn’t somehow switch to WiFi. 

I recently moved to the home that I’m having this issue in... so I’m not 100% familiar with how the wiring is run behind the walls. I guess I need to try and find out. There was just a coax jack in the wall of the bedroom that the Fios install tech screwed the coax cable into. I’ve tried switching coax cables from the wall to the mini box. 

It’s so odd that the problem only occurs 99.9% at night. I can’t get over that. It was happening last night when I made my original post... and then I tested it this morning and it was working perfectly. It doesn’t make sense to me. If the wiring was bad or there was a faulty splitter somewhere, I’m not sure how it would ever work properly. Also my TV connected to my main STB in the living room doesn’t have this issue.

One other random thought. I don’t have DVR service. However, Verizon sent me some notice saying they were giving me like a 3 month free trial. I didn’t want it.. but there was no way for me to accept or deny it. Could it be possible that the DVR service is running in the background and if the WiFi signal is weak (also seems to get weaker at night - no idea why)... that could cause the box to freeze? I may be way off but I’m trying to think of any/all options.


If the box is hooked up with coax, wifi has no bearing on the issue. You could try looking for a free wifi analyzer like the one from Netgear to see what kind of traffic there is at night there, then switch your router to a fixed channel that has the least nearby interference. What level of internet do you have, and are there more devices being used at night? Run a wired speed test in the day, then again at night to see if your speed is dropping way off at night. If so contact support and see if they can correct it for you. That should only help open some bandwidth on the router which MAY help the mini. The problem you describe still sounds like the mini is conne Ted via wifi. Go to menu>customer support >top support tools >connected device status, and make sure the mini shows up as a moca connection. From the map, if you click on the mini you can try a device auto correction, or a refresh device. Not sure, but it cant hurt!

Re: TV keeps freezing - Fios One Mini
Beach_Life
Newbie

We originally had the Mini (master BR) connected via WiFi and it froze constantly after 30-60 minutes and the only way to resolve it was with a power cycle.  Admittedly the signal was not great (between -55 to -60db), but I really thought that we would either picture or no picture and not picture until things got squirrelly.

I was fortunate to have a wired coax connection available from the previous owner's Comast install which I did not want to use for aesthetics, but that seemed to solve the problem for a week or two.  Now it seems to freeze within about 30 minutes, but I have noticed that if I wait 15-20 minutes it often clears up.  Not acceptable, but not as 'fatal' as what I was seeing with WiFi, and would be good to know if this is a problem with the device or something else.  Either way, getting a bit frustrated.

FWIW I checked the settings to confirm that this is a MoCA and not a WiFi connection.  Not sure that it matters, but I have the output from the ONT going to a MoCA splitter with one side of the splitter going directly to the Mini with the other direct to my Gigabit router. 

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Re: TV keeps freezing - Fios One Mini
clem21
Community Leader
Community Leader

@Beach_Life wrote:

We originally had the Mini (master BR) connected via WiFi and it froze constantly after 30-60 minutes and the only way to resolve it was with a power cycle.  Admittedly the signal was not great (between -55 to -60db), but I really thought that we would either picture or no picture and not picture until things got squirrelly.

I was fortunate to have a wired coax connection available from the previous owner's Comast install which I did not want to use for aesthetics, but that seemed to solve the problem for a week or two.  Now it seems to freeze within about 30 minutes, but I have noticed that if I wait 15-20 minutes it often clears up.  Not acceptable, but not as 'fatal' as what I was seeing with WiFi, and would be good to know if this is a problem with the device or something else.  Either way, getting a bit frustrated.

FWIW I checked the settings to confirm that this is a MoCA and not a WiFi connection.  Not sure that it matters, but I have the output from the ONT going to a MoCA splitter with one side of the splitter going directly to the Mini with the other direct to my Gigabit router. 


Make sure the splitter is MOCA 2.0 certified or it will cause issues.

Re: TV keeps freezing - Fios One Mini
Wondertwin
Newbie

I am having the same problem on 2 minis that are connected via WiFi.  I tried coax connection and still the same issue.  The tech came out and replaced everything dvr, router, and failing ONT.  Still didn’t fix it.   Funny thing it didn’t skip while the tv connected to the DVR was on.  Tried switching out the dvr with the mini in the bedroom and it cleared up.  Switched back and switched out the HDMI cable and it cleared up for a couple of days.  Now it is back to skipping again. Strangely recordings on the dvr does not skip.    Strangely always had this issue but resetting the box seemed to fix it but now nothing works. This stopped working with the change to the guide.    I am investigating other cable options at this point. Too expensive for it not to work.  

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Re: TV keeps freezing - Fios One Mini
MK72
Enthusiast - Level 1

Had similar problems with Fios TV One at house we moved to four months ago. There is one main DVR With coax connecting from the new Fios router in basement (with a MoCA 2.0 splitter running coax Cable to router and to Fios One dvr; one client set-top box with coax on main floor (and a fios wifi extender on second floor). From the get go, we noticed cable tv programs freeze up, or Netflix through Fios not connect or freeze, or On Demand menu not loading, on demand movies freezing. Picture quality was unaffected. At first I thought it was only the client box. Rebooting / trying to reconnect worked for a few minutes. ONT is outdoors on side of house. I noticed that two coax cables run from the ONT, a pre-existing black coax cable from an earlier installation, and the new coax cable from the Fios service upgrade when we moved in. 

I called VZ and went through troubleshooting, swapping dvr and client on the two floors, to no avail. They suggested replacing the coax cables, but I wasn’t ready for that step. As it happened I had an extra MoCA 2.0 splitter from our previous-house Fios setup. There was an old splitter rated for ?5-1000MHz outside of the house. I replaced it with the VZ MoCA 2.0 splitter (rated to > 5000Mhz), and voila, problem seems solved. Cable programs and on demand stuff has been working smoothly for a few days now.It all came down to a splitter mismatch (the old one was not up to spec), so if you have more than one splitter in your house, I would suggest trying that. 

Re: TV keeps freezing - Fios One Mini
tdeprenda
Enthusiast - Level 3

Having the issue for months now. Replaced the splitter as suggested but didn’t help. Where did you find the splitter that you mentioned, VZ MoCA 2.0 splitter (rated to > 5000Mhz). All I could find is the 2.0 splitter that works in the 5-1675 range. Thanks!

Re: TV keeps freezing - Fios One Mini
clem21
Community Leader
Community Leader