You didn't consider uploading either, which is painfully slow on most connections. Infinity, on the other hand, had the fastest upload speed for a home connection in the country when it launched (I think VM might have caught up now). In my experience, Infinity's upload is around the same as ADSL's download, which certainly takes the frustration out of uploading videos.

Yep. It's faster for my dad to post me some DVDs to upload to YouTube than it is for him to upload them himself!

Intriguing as this conversation is, maybe we are all veering far off-topic now?

And my point above is proved, even this topic is a bandwidth peeing contest.

At this moment in time, the average users doesn't require the bandwidth that FTTC offers. Youtube HD, iPlayer, even the subscription film services don't use much bandwidth. Even with 10 computers all streaming HD content you would find it hard to stretch an infinity 2 connection.

When you consider that a good Infinity 2 connection offers around twice the bandwidth of a DVB-T2 mux which gets along fine with 4 HD channels on it, you can see how most of the time FTTC bandwidth is not being used to its potential.

Unless your ADSL2+ connection is awful, I would expect it to be easily capable for an average household, even with multiple devices online.

I get along fine with my ADSL2+ service which gets 16Meg, and I would say I use more bandwidth than many average households.

Just a tad!

Well yes, but given the choice between 1-2Mbps ADSL and 40-80Mbps FTTC, which is the position many are now in, which would you choose? 16Mbps ADSL is not an option for us.

There are even faster ways...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers


Cheers,
David.

Of course, and you are right to choose what is best for you.

My point is that just because the vast majority of people will be able to get FTTC soon, doesn't mean they are all waiting on the edge of their seats to switch over to it, and my guess is that many people who get acceptable ADSL speeds will not bother for a long while. In most cases, the extra cost isn't worth it.

Saying IPTV will take over because everyone will have FTTC soon, is simply not true. IPTV over a fixed land line will not 'take over' until it has a delivery method which does not require yet another subscription.

I was wondering if the HD channels still broadcasting at 1920x1080i resolution, and if not, when did they revert back?

They are 1920x1080i on all platforms.

Actually they dynamically switch between 1920 x 1080i50 and 1920 x 1080p25 depending on how the encoder feels about the content. The i-Plate on my Humax HDR Fox T2 clearly shows either 1080p or 1080i, sometimes it changes when the i-Plate is displayed.

Sigh, yes OK. On Freeview HD, you get either 1080i/25 or 1080p/25. On all other platforms, the video is always transmitted as 1080i/25.

This makes sod all difference to the end user though, it's just a way of reducing bit rate requirements.

The total bit rate available across all the channels (I know they're stat muxed) is fixed, it's for 5 HD channels in the one mux. Therefore really the 1080i50 vs. 1080p25 switching is to provide better picture quality within the limited bandwidth available. If switching between i50 and p25 weren't available they'd still go ahead with 5 HD channels on the mux.

Yes exactly, when bit rate requirements are reduced for one channel, the other channels have more bits available, which increases image quality.

My point was whether 1080p/25 video is transmitted as native 1080p/25 or in a 1080i/25 wrapper makes no difference to the image quality of that video for the end user. It just frees more bandwidth for other channels.