NTL:Home, Homechoice, British Telecom/Sky Tv and Telewest Summary of choices

Again! its that time of the day to debate which comapny gives you good value for money?

Who do you think gives you value for money?
Which company lisens to its customers and you get a reply?
Who is the the best ISP provider? NTL? Telewest? BT? Homechoice?

I spoke to a representative from homechoice and they are doing the same thing like what BT are doing targeting non broadband areas that are in the ntl areas of london

for example homechoice is now available in the SE part of London and parts SW London. These areas are mostly served by ntl home.
East london areas. Homechoice has not expanded to yet. As they are all enabled broadband users from ntl!

Who do you think is good for money? your answers please!

Comments

  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 103
    Forum Member
    HomeChoice is definitely good value for money; that's why I signed up. NTL's base channel package, phone line rental and 1Mbps broadband together come to £57/month. The HomeChoice base package and BT line rental together total roughly £47/month.

    Where HomeChoice falls down is where you want a vast number of channels. Even if you subscribe to all three optional channel packages, they can't begin to compete with digital cable or Sky. There's no technical reason for this - because of the way the HomeChoice service works, their channel capacity is in theory effectively infinite; rather, it's a business matter of negotiating carriage. Although the video-on-demand options mitigate this lack of variety to some extent, the VOD library really isn't deep enough to hold your interest for very long.

    After having the new flavour HomeChoice for a week, on the whole I'm pleased. The number of channels is good enough for me (though having Sky One would please the wife) and the combination of digital television plus fast broadband at this price is compelling. My only real complaints are:
    • Niggardly 1GB/day download limit on the broadband. Leaving a single high-quality audio stream (like an Internet radio station) on throughout the day will exhaust this (after about 18.5 hours). This really undermines the vision of digital convergence that HomeChoice is all about.
    • No widescreen video. The HomeChoice set-top box always outputs a 4:3 picture, full stop. This makes the service much less attractive to those with 16:9 television sets.
    • I've encountered video problems with most, though not all, of the video-on-demand channels that make them virtually unwatchable. I'm willing to chalk this up to new-service teething pains and give them a fair chance to fix it, provided they do so quickly. HomeChoice are sending an engineer to my house tomorrow to try.
  • Brush MasterBrush Master Posts: 1,572
    Forum Member
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    Denuvo wrote:
    (...)
    No widescreen video. The HomeChoice set-top box always outputs a 4:3 picture, full stop. This makes the service much less attractive to those with 16:9 television sets.
    (...)

    This is to the contrary what a HomeChoice representative told me. Quote: "We broadcast in what ever format the transmission is in. Therefore if the content is broadcast in widescreen we would do that, but most of our BBC content is broadcast in 4:3 and that it was we would transmit it in".

    Who's right and who's wrong?
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 103
    Forum Member
    My widescreen television set is correct. HomeChoice provides nothing in 16:9.

    Perhaps your HomeChoice rep was talking about squeezing a 16:9 picture into a 4:3 signal with letterboxes. I've seen some of that.
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 273
    Forum Member
    what set top box do home choice provide? are they decend and not like telewests?
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 25
    Forum Member
    I am not sure if homechoice does the broadband by itself? But lets compare it to other networks in the UK

    Homechoice - How many channels can you get? and whats the price of the full package?

    Telewest - How many channels can you get? And whats the price of the full package?

    NTL:Home - All i know i am paying £49.50 for all channels but there isnt 100 channels as they said there is? are they talking about the premium rate channels too?

    British Telecom/Sky - Whats the score on there full package then?
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 664
    Forum Member
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    This is to the contrary what a HomeChoice representative told me. Quote: "We broadcast in what ever format the transmission is in. Therefore if the content is broadcast in widescreen we would do that, but most of our BBC content is broadcast in 4:3 and that it was we would transmit it in".

    Who's right and who's wrong?

    I thin you have had a sales man that is doing the usual trick... telling you anything to get the sale.

    the BBC brodcast LOADS of stuff in wodescreen - (I think most of the stuff is 16:9 - in the digital feeds)
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 324
    Forum Member
    the BBC brodcast LOADS of stuff in wodescreen

    I think he's reffering to the BBC Video On Demand service which is on Homechoice. They may decide to only broadcast 4:3 to save money on storing all the video clips.

    I wouldn't mind getting Homechoice if they squeesed the extra couple of miles to where I live. Is the whole ADSL TV thing worth ditching Sky/Cable for?
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 103
    Forum Member
    I repeat: everything on HomeChoice is 4:3. The signal output from the STB is always 4:3. There is no 16:9. Full stop.

    HomeChoice use their own set -top box. It's a decent looking piece of kit and nice and small.

    The full package costs £45/month. I count about 36 "real" (live broadcast) channels, and another 26 video-on-demand channels. However, the number of VOD channels is really pretty meaningless - splitting the VOD library into separate channels is nothing more than a convenience to make it easier for the customer to find programs by category.

    By the way: they replaced my set-top box and this has taken care of the picture problems I was experiencing.
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