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Old 23-08-2004, 16:49
sdshaw
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Originally Posted by lucaspowell
Doesn't the engineer check the picture quality when he has completed the installation or is it something that happened after he had gone?
most of the channels are fine, the distortion only happens with movies and a few things on C One. It's weird - it seems to discriminate against certain shows!

the engineer wasn't great, it has to be said - he took three hours to install everything, then had to come back the next day because he didn't know how to get it working for Mac!
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Old 23-08-2004, 17:13
Denuvo
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Originally Posted by sdshaw
most of the channels are fine, the distortion only happens with movies and a few things on C One. It's weird - it seems to discriminate against certain shows!
Same here - the problem occurred only on some (though not all) of the video-on-demand content. I suspect you have the same problem I did and that it's just manifesting itself differently on your television.

The installation engineer did check the picture quality before he left, but not for all of the VOD channels.
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Old 23-08-2004, 17:17
sdshaw
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did you say it was all sorted once you got a new STB?
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Old 23-08-2004, 19:26
Denuvo
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Yep. (blah blah blah bloody 10-character-per-message minimum)
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Old 25-08-2004, 11:47
Squashua
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Originally Posted by Denuvo
Yep. (blah blah blah bloody 10-character-per-message minimum)
I have just had the same problem. They didn't check it after installation, and the help desk tells me they don't know what this is about. I'd put money on King of the Hill and Buffy being affected, Friends and West Wing Unaffected. Am I right?

I will hassel them to replace the STB.

Squashua
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Old 25-08-2004, 12:34
Denuvo
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Originally Posted by Squashua
I'd put money on King of the Hill and Buffy being affected, Friends and West Wing Unaffected.
Buy that man a donut. You'll also find that most of V:MX is unaffected - only a very few of the videos exhibit the problem.
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Old 25-08-2004, 12:53
TheBigM
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It is probs a re-encoding algorithm error when you want it via VOD
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Old 26-08-2004, 11:19
lucaspowell
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As mine is being installed tomorrow, can anyone recommend which VOD to get the engineer to test?
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Old 26-08-2004, 15:33
Denuvo
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Originally Posted by lucaspowell
As mine is being installed tomorrow, can anyone recommend which VOD to get the engineer to test?
Any of the King of the Hill episodes on C-One (channel 6) should show the problem. If you've got it, you'll know it.
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Old 27-08-2004, 10:32
TheBigM
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Maybe they should let the cable co's help with their expertise in landline transmission and partial knowledge of re-encoding signals for broadcast etc. Homechoice probz should not upgrade in the same areas as them. Upgrade in other areas would help break Sky which is a good service but anti-competitive. Also cable co's provide similar services to Homechoice so it would be mutually beneficial to co-operate but operate in different areas, with a view to bring down Sky, also then they could have higher margins as they only compete with SKy, see NTL vs. Telewest helping each other.
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Old 27-08-2004, 10:47
mprieler
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i have got HC installed recently ant it works appart from some quality problems on the broadcast channels quite well.
however when i've tied to add wireless access via a belkin 6130 access point i've encvountered some severfe problems.
first of all it was very hard to establish a connection (got only the internal AP address) and then the connection speed was/is extremely poor ~40kbit/s
if i use a cable connection its fine ~800kbit/s; i've read som of your previous threads and know that there are some DHCP lease problems and that some of you overcame them and are using wireless connections w/o any problems.

any ideas for my (strange) problem?

thank you!
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Old 27-08-2004, 12:41
Denuvo
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Originally Posted by samilshah
Maybe they should let the cable co's help with their expertise in landline transmission and partial knowledge of re-encoding signals for broadcast etc.
I don't think the cable companies really have that much expertise to offer HomeChoice. The transmission model used is profoundly different.

Take a cable company that offers 100 channels. All of those channels are encoded into one great big signal which is then sent down the cable into every home simultaneously. This bears repeating: on a cable system, every channel is sent into every home all the time. You want to watch MTV. Your set-top box then has a great deal of work to do. It must pluck that one channel you want to watch out of all that noise. It must perform access control, determining if you are authorised to view that channel (have you paid for a subscription?). It must then decrypt and decode the signal and translate it into plain video suitable for transmission to your television.

With HomeChoice, your set-top box tells the server in HomeChoice's head end facility "I want MTV". The server then sends MTV *and only MTV* down the line into your house. The set-top box decodes (not decrypts) the signal sends the video to your television.

On a cable system, there's a lot of intelligence in the set-top box and not so much intelligence at the head end. The head end kit only needs to encode and encrypt the signal once for transmission into thousands of homes. The heavy lifting is done by the STB. HomeChoice turns this on its head: the STB is little more than a conduit for sending a video stream to the television and remote control signals back to the head end, while the servers to communicate individually with and send a video stream to every single STB.

To be fair, this is set to start changing: the cable companies have been making noises about launching their own video-on-demand services, which will necessarily require them to start using distribution mechanisms more like what HomeChoice does. This suggests that the truth of the situation is in fact the opposite of your suggestion: it's really HomeChoice that has some expertise to offer Telewest and NTL!
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Old 27-08-2004, 17:33
TheBigM
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fair enough. The cable companies wasted lots of money when they laid their cables instead of sharing the cost with other companies e.g. utilities who would be digging up a road at the same time. At least save yourselves and bother and co-operate on this issue. The cable companies may not have expertise to offer except possibly co-ordinating where they unbundle exchanges to make homechoice available in a concerted effort to make pay-tv more competitive. Also the cable companies do know some things about TV such as which channels are more popular i.e. ratings info, what is a good and efficient way to encapsulate and encode the transmission. I.E. Though the choices are made at the head-end in Homechoice, they still have to be sent to the home, which cable co's know about, including network topology, and other things such as collaborative call centres. Sky may be great but being too powerful makes bad news for the consumer in the end over anti-competitiveness as they are doing with restricting some channels or overcharging sky movies and sports to homechoice. Problems will occur especially the way that since BT has most of the network, it has very free reins, look how anaemic ofcom are acting.
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Old 27-08-2004, 20:35
M_at
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Originally Posted by samilshah
Though the choices are made at the head-end in Homechoice, they still have to be sent to the home, which cable co's know about, including network topology, and other things such as collaborative call centres.
Samil - the network architecture for cable is TOTALLY different to that required for Homechoice. Cable networks are a collection of shared network segments with certain frequencies used to multicast programming and certain frequencies used like ethernet to send traffic to specific devices.

Home Choice uses discrete network paths back to a server which has direct access to the programming required.

So cable networks broadcast, Homechoice unicasts.
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Old 31-08-2004, 12:01
TheBigM
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ok fine not on their network issues but there are probably other ways to co-operate which would be mutually beneficial whilst Sky is so dominant. If HC succeeds, a merged cable co might even want to buy it or even a telco giant like C&W, then they would have ultimate coverage even though they would favour the cable system. I mean ntl already does freedom services this would be another extension. Also they know which channels are more popular what sells on interactive etc.
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Old 02-09-2004, 10:34
dronkula
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From todays media.guardian.co.uk:

Video Networks to raise £80m
http://media.guardian.co.uk/city/sto...295598,00.html
Dan Milmo
Thursday September 2, 2004
The Guardian

Video Networks, owner of the HomeChoice video-on-demand service, is planning to raise up to £80m at the end of the year as it seeks a broader shareholder base to support expansion plans.

The company hopes to extend the HomeChoice service to cities such as Manchester, Birmingham and Glasgow. HomeChoice is available to 1.25m London homes and already has the funds in place to widen its coverage to 4m over the next year. The largest shareholder in Video Networks is Chris Larson, one of the founders of Microsoft, who rescued the company from closure with a £60m cheque two years ago.

Roger Lynch, chief executive of Video Networks, said Mr Larson has agreed to back the latest funding push, but the company needs a broader shareholder base as it seeks to become a nationwide service. "We are doing a fundraising later this year and it will be in the range of £60m to £80m ... We want to bring in a larger shareholder base that can accelerate our growth. A lot of our cost going forward will be in acquiring subscribers and we want to set up for our growth nationally."

Mr Lynch said the company had yet to appoint an investment bank to lead the fundraising and had not decided on the means of raising cash, from issuing new shares to offering convertible securities. Private equity investors will be considered but they are one of many possible sources of funding, he added. The other shareholders in Video Networks include Time Warner and Disney, which control less than 10% of the company between them. Mr Larson is by far the biggest investor, with about 80% of the equity.

"Our national rollout would require additional capital but that would be around 2005."

Video Networks offers over 5,000 Hollywood films on demand and specially tailored channels, which include US and UK drama. It also offers a "catch-up TV" service which plays back popular programmes from various channels, including EastEnders and Coronation Street. Because it is beamed to subscribers through telephone lines, it also sells a broadband service and will shortly match cable's "triple-play" offering by marketing a telecoms service.

The biggest breakthrough for Video Networks since its rescue came last month, when it secured a deal with BSkyB to carry premium channels such as Sky Sports 1 and Sky Movies. The deal, brokered by former NTL and BSkyB executive Jon Sykes, made HomeChoice an easier sell to viewers who have yet to grasp the video-on-demand concept.
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Old 02-09-2004, 11:08
Inkblot
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Couple of quickish questions for anyone with HomeChoice-

1) How easy is it to tape programmes off HomeChoice; for instance, is there a timer for when you're on holiday? Also, I think I read somewhere that copy protection prevents recording of all channels, including normal ones like E4 - did I misunderstand this?

2) I find the picture on E4 very poor on cable. Is it OK on HomeChoice?
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Old 02-09-2004, 14:00
Zapomatic
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1. No timer facility at all. And apparently if the box isn't used for a period it switches itself off! The only recording I've attempted has been with a DV camcorder with analogue inputs (recording a music video for someone!) which presented no problems, although this approach always seems to bypass any copy protection.

2. Picture quality seems good on E4.
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Old 02-09-2004, 14:11
Inkblot
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Originally Posted by Zapomatic
1. No timer facility at all.
Rats. The ntl three day EPG is one of my biggest gripes but three days is better than none.
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Old 02-09-2004, 21:39
TheBigM
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ntl already do freedom internet and telephony services, you never know they might be interested in Homechoice or an ADSL based broadcast service. Also you know ntl will improve things they are doing it slowly. just how slowly is the issue.
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