Wanted to sign up for NTL TV service

[dannyboi2003]

After several years of having no reason to hate NTL i finally have one. I have had NTL broadband for over 4 years now and for my own TV i have Sky. I still live at home with my family yet i'm always the one who looks after anything electrical in the house so as a surprise i decided to get the TV's downstairs hooked up to NTL so i could finally dump our crappy TV aerial. My intention was to subscribe to the basic £10 pm package and have it installed in the lounge, then i'd connect the second TV downstairs to the RF out and tune in 1-5 and using the signal from the NTL box. Well i rang up NTL today to order the service only to be told that i also had to have a telephone line as part of the package as well which would cost an addtional £9.50 meaning i would paying paying £19.50, for that price i could get another two Sky subscriptions.

So well done NTL you just lost another potential customer, why the hell do you have to have a telephone line with the TV service!!!!!

Well thats my rant over,
See you guys.

[Neil]

:welcome: to the site. :)

I totally hear you, & it has been a bugbear of mine for a very long time that ntl force their inferior phone line on you when all you want is DTV.

The fact that they have to force it on you sums up that nobody would want it otherwise....:rolleyes:

Anyway-stck around, & enjoy the site. :p:

[Derek]

So well done NTL you just lost another potential customer, why the hell do you have to have a telephone line with the TV service!!!!!

So they can recoup the initial cost of installation etc. faster than customers having digi on its own.

You need a phoneline for the Sky multiroom anyway. Why not switch from BT (who I assume you are with) and move the number to Ntl?

[bob_builder]

:welcome: dannyboi2003!

Well that is just the way it is - it is to do with NTL not making any money from the TV service so they have to sell you a phone line rental too!

But you would have been dissapointed, in any case. NTL digital boxes no longer supply channels 1-5 on the RF so your plan would not have worked.

However, channels 1-5 are available still on the cable so you could have done what you wanted using a cable splitter. I note that you already have NTL broadband so you already have an active NTL cable connection. You should be able to split your current cable to supply channels 1-5 to the other TVs and save yourself £10 per month!

[Millay]

Just get a second hand sky box and subscribe to minimal channels thats what we do and we dont have it hooked to a telephone line (nor do we need to)

[seaneeboy]

If you just want basepack stuff, why not get freeview?

[SMHarman]

If you just want basepack stuff, why not get freeview?
TV's downstairs hooked up to NTL so i could finally dump our crappy TV aerial. <snipped>
Probably as the aerial signal is poor.

[dannyboi2003]

Hi Everyone,

WOW! I didnt expect so many replies, thanx for making me feel so welcome.

dezzo - Yes there is a BT line at home but its not my line and my family dont wish to move it to NTL, i have a mobile phone with work so i have no need for a telephone line of my own. I havent had the skybox connected to a phoneline for well over a year now as i had to move my room around a bit when i had my new TV and the phone cable wasnt long enough to reach to the socket, i did intend to buy a telephone extension but just never got round to it.

bob_builder - A friend at work had NTL didgital installed when he moved house last year and he has all his tv's connected up to it with channels 1-5 tuned in, the NTL engineer even connected them all up and tuned them in for him as all the cabling was there from the previous owner of the house. Can i just split my NTL cable and hook it strait into the back of my tv's then, as it happens i have a few NTL splitters which someone gave to me ages ago after they had cancelled their NTL service and had ripped out all the internal cabling because they were re-decorating. My dad knows someone who works for NTL so i could see if he would make me up some cables, so can i just plug it in the tv and tune in the channels - cool thats £10 saved, i'll give that a go tonight. Cheers. Actually just had another thought, the connection point for my broadband is right behind my TV which has a spare point thats blanked off so i ould just use that as the two tv's downstairs are fed though my skybox so we can have sky downstairs - job done!

SMHarman - Yes your taotally right, i dont have freeview in my area so thats not an option either. I live in a valley so we dont pull off the main transmitter for our area but we come off a tiny relay station that oddly enough was managed by NTL but i gather they have sold off their transmission network now. The signal is so weak even with our 48 element aerial that cost a bomb to have installed we still get snow and ghosting on our TV's.

Cheers Guys

[bob_builder]

A friend at work had NTL didgital installed when he moved house last year and he has all his tv's connected up to it with channels 1-5 tuned in, the NTL engineer even connected them all up and tuned them in for him as all the cabling was there from the previous owner of the house. Can i just split my NTL cable and hook it strait into the back of my tv's then, as it happens i have a few NTL splitters which someone gave to me ages ago after they had cancelled their NTL service and had ripped out all the internal cabling because they were re-decorating. My dad knows someone who works for NTL so i could see if he would make me up some cables, so can i just plug it in the tv and tune in the channels - cool thats £10 saved, i'll give that a go tonight. Cheers. Actually just had another thought, the connection point for my broadband is right behind my TV which has a spare point thats blanked off so i ould just use that as the two tv's downstairs are fed though my skybox so we can have sky downstairs - job done!
Yes, try it out first to make sure it works.

You might find the second cable point could well be a FM port and that will have everything above FM frequency filtered out so may not work with TV. Try it with your cable modem cable if it does not work.

However, bear in mind that all analogue TV signals (including those on the NTL cable) will be turned off in under 7 years time so do not go throwing that aerial away just yet (Freeview will be available to everybody before then)!

[dannyboi2003]

Hi Guys,

Just wanted to give you an update. Well lastnight when i got home i disconnected the coax cable from my cable modem and attatched one of those screw on converters that turns it into a mail coax plug (again given to me by someone ages ago). I plugged it into the TV card on my pc which i have never used (it came with the pc but i never got round to running an aerial cable to it) and after working out how to auto-tune it off it went looking for channels. Well OMG!! not only can i pick up crystal clear 1-5 but i can also recieve E4, Discovery Channel, Sky News, BBC News 24, normal channel 4 and finally a channel that isnt broadcasting at the moment and just has like an NTL slide show on it. I just cant believe that i havent found out about this 4 years ago when the NTL service was installed but i bet its not something they like to advertise.

Its funny you should mention the port only being FM bob as that is what its labelled up as so i may have to ask my dads mate what i need to do about that but i'll give it a go anyway. Yes it ius a sad fact that analogue will eventually be turned off but i still dont see how that will be possible, what about all those car radios and old vintage tuners that people collect, i just dont see how it can be done. In any case i wont be having the aerial removed as that will only cost me money so it can stay where it is, at the moment my family just wouldnt pay for a freeview box and will probably hold off until they start to offer them free to those of us who havent changed to digital when they eventually want to switch of analogue.

All the best
Dan

[bob_builder]

Its funny you should mention the port only being FM bob as that is what its labelled up as so i may have to ask my dads mate what i need to do about that but i'll give it a go anyway.
Try connecting the FM port to a Hi-Fi with a FM aerial socket - you may find you get a number of radio stations you could not normally pick up! ;)