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HD on Homechoice - On the way at the end of the year


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Old 01-08-2006, 13:35
zigzagger
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I spoke to customer care at Homechoice and was told that a HD service is in development and that it will be up and running late 2006 / early 2007. Looks like I might be buying a HD set in the January sales...
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Old 01-08-2006, 13:57
beefqueen
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Does anyone actually believe this will happen?! I'd be more convinced if they put something on their website.
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Old 01-08-2006, 16:19
M_at
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Whatever you do don't buy one before - or at least not a decent large screen.

Just got myself one for the purposes of gettign a good picture from a connected computer and HC is by far the worst image source available to me - it loses to Freeview by a large margin even when comparing like with like (IE News 24 on both platforms)

The picture is just too soft.
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Old 01-08-2006, 16:37
iSix
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Did they give you any other details like price and connectivity?

When I called they denied all knowledge of a HD service coming at the end of the year
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Old 01-08-2006, 17:30
Peter We
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I heard people slag off BluRay picture quality as well, needs the 50Gb disc's and better codec's apprently. Waiting for the PS3 will probably mean better BR disc's as well as the launch of cheaper HDTV's as companies try to gain market share.
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Old 01-08-2006, 18:10
zigzagger
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I called them to make a package change and asked the question in passing - I didn't enquire about pricing but was told that the stb is being worked on and that there was a while to go before any announcements.
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Old 04-08-2006, 14:52
BBRealist
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Originally Posted by iSix
Did they give you any other details like price and connectivity?

When I called they denied all knowledge of a HD service coming at the end of the year
I was told HDTV was in development but that there was no launch or availability date.
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Old 04-08-2006, 15:38
mbear
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I was told today (by CS) that HD was in development but that the picture quality on HD was lower than it currently is and therefore they were working on getting it better. This, obviously, is quite interesting, coz surely the point of HD is that it's better quality. Oh well.

More positively they did say that they are currently rolling out "games" and the interactive services (including red button) across exchanges at the moment and we would be notified when our particular exchange was affected. Hmm...
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Old 04-08-2006, 16:42
BBRealist
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Would have thought that releasing HD will absolutely require ADSL2+ to carry it so those craving higher speed internet and HD will probably get them in pretty quick succession as even an MP4 type codec needs 4 - 5Mbit as a minimum for 'pseudo' HD.
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Old 04-08-2006, 16:47
mbear
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Yeah - I concur... I guess this can't be the issue in their test environment, though. It must be something to do with the boxes... maybe they've found them not as upgradeable as they'd first thought. That'd be a painful problem... perhaps even life-ending...
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Old 04-08-2006, 19:10
BBRealist
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Yes this is probably where they find out the people who sold them the new CPEs badly lied about their capabilities and they never really were able to test them properly.

Far from unknown, just look at the fun ntl have had with Pace and Samsung equipment.
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Old 04-08-2006, 20:10
WockaWockaWocka
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The current boxes only have SCART outputs and so can't output HD (which needs Component or more likely HDMI outputs). So, whatever Homechoice unexpectedly pull out of the hat for HD (and I'd be disappointed if it didn't happen out of the blue) they'll have to provide a new box to accompany it.
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Old 07-08-2006, 10:18
Peter We
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The STB's were designed by Homehoice and use the TI the DM642 signal processor which is capable of handling HDTV (http://www.eetchina.com/ARTICLES/200...DIST_AN_02.pdf)

The lack of HDMI is more of a problem. But given that a a Bill of Materials for HD IPTV can be had for $50-$100, replacing the STB would be the best option. £10/month for HDTV like Telewest and Sky would cover the cost of the new STB pretty quickly. Only a %age of new/existing customers will want HDTV anyway.
Luckily, HC don't have many customers with STB's that will need swapping out
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Old 09-10-2006, 13:50
talktoofast
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we shall have to wait for ADSL2 to come 1st as HD signal takes about 8mb.
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