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HD on Homechoice - On the way at the end of the year
zigzagger
01-08-2006
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...
beefqueen
01-08-2006
Does anyone actually believe this will happen?! I'd be more convinced if they put something on their website.
M_at
01-08-2006
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.
iSix
01-08-2006
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
Peter We
01-08-2006
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.
zigzagger
01-08-2006
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.
BBRealist
04-08-2006
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.
mbear
04-08-2006
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...
BBRealist
04-08-2006
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.
mbear
04-08-2006
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...
BBRealist
04-08-2006
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.
WockaWockaWocka
04-08-2006
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.
Peter We
07-08-2006
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
talktoofast
09-10-2006
we shall have to wait for ADSL2 to come 1st as HD signal takes about 8mb.
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