ntl newsgroups

[Joel Fletch]

Hi there,

Does anybody have any information about the current state of a lot of the binary newsgroups?
For several months now they have become mostly useless, with most files incomplete and unrepairable.

From searching the web all I seem to find is any complaint made to ntl falls on deaf ears and nobody responds.
Is there a direct email address to ntl that can be used to notify of this problem and hopefully get a resolution.

The only information I can find on their website concerning newsgroups is here...
http://www.ntlworld.com/toolsservices/newsgroups/

Where they state it's a world class service!
Ho-hum.

Any help would be gratefully received.

[triage]

I have been watching the newsgroups lately....i personally have seen a lot of the "movie" group binary postings were purged very quickly (most within 24 hours). The posts were claiming they were films that were still out in the cinema (i don't know if they were as i didn't download them). i noticed however that a lot of binary newsgroups with more "legitimate"(for want of a better word) postings were not disapeering.....i started looking at these as a friend of mine commented on it.

why this is happneing i do not know. were there any newsgroups you were having issues with in particular?

[Joel Fletch]

Well, I suppose from following ntl's own webpage...

"If it's got "binaries" in the title, e.g. alt.binaries.movies or alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.complete_cd, it is likely that files like movies clips or music files can be found there."

As an example, these two groups in particular just seem to be full of incomplete posts.
I guess most of the groups that are popular with large posts each day are showing up incomplete.

[triage]

i was watching alt.binaries.movies and alt.binaries.movies.divx (along with a few others) and like you said the posts were getting purged extremely quickley (thats why they were showing up missing or incomplete). there are some binaries that do not have copyrighted material on which i had a look at and were not getting purged as quickley. Like i said why this is i do not know.

[phalinmegob]

i have looked into over 100 of the binary groups, not just the very popular ones over the last 2 days and have not found one which has more than 50% completion,the majority are only showing at around 20%.speed and connection are perfect,just no completion.i e-mailed ntl and got an automatic response from them about speed and connectivity.i rang customer services twice and have been told there is not a problem so it must be my pc..!
so i guess every one else on ntl newsgroup server has a duff computer lol

[Ponder]

I'm not a huge downloader but find binariy groups useful on occasion. Recently though, the ntl news servers have been less than complete in all the binary groups I subscribe to. Articles in the groups I watch aren't being purged quickly because random parts are missing within the posted files. If they were being purged then all parts from the file posted at the same time would go, they're just not being received by ntl's servers.
This is also an inbound only problem. Posts made to ntl's servers make it out fine.

[nottmuk]

talking about newsgroups - is anyone else suffering speed problems?
for the last couple of weeks I have been getting very "bursty" dowloads.

That is that they start to download, then it comes to a complete stop for about 10-30 seconds, then starts again for about 10-30 seconds before another pause etc etc. its very annoying and has only been noticed over the last 2-3 weeks.
I used to get a very good newsgroup service.

[nottmuk]

I have just been to my favourite binary group (alt.guitar.tab) to take a look.

Every single binary post has 2-3 parts missing - they are all multi-part posts and not a single posting is complete. Its not a case of "purging" as several posts and part posts are several weeks old. Seems very odd.
I wonder if its related to "bursty downloads, as there has definately been a severe drop in the service level since christmas. Had not done any binary downloads though since so had not noticed the missing post phenomenon.