Re: letter - no price rise but less channels
 

AFAIK, passthru is not really available on the Digi boxes

but there are other solutions around that will achieve the same thing ;)

The boxes can lock up, had some that do, but have got both 4000 and 2000 boxes that tend to behave, with BB through the STB.

some people have bad experiences with some boxes, but in general, they are ok. If that's all that is stopping you ... take the plunge .. :D

Re: letter - no price rise but less channels
 

Like I've said previously, it's nothing to do with freeing up bandwidth but to do with the fact that analogue will be switched off by 2010 (or earlier if the Govt. get their way)

ntl make very little on TV revenue to be honest, as most of it goes to sky (who make a lot of the channels/hold the rights to a lot of them) so most price increases are due to increased costs of providing the service.

Re: letter - no price rise but less channels
 

thanks Nem, to be fair the 'passthrough' on analogue is really only an option to connect an external aerial to the box, so that one can watch a cable channel & record terrestrial at the same time, I presume a digi-box can also do this?

It will be interesting to compare prices - currently pay £19.99 for two boxes & £16 for two phone lines - as digital includes the phone rental it may work out cheaper than the new analogue tariff?

Also have SACM, so wouldn't have to use the stb for broadband, which is a bonus.

take your point about the TV revenue, but as analogue allegedly takes 8x the bandwidth of digital, I wouldn't be surprised if if was at least part of the reason for 'discouraging' analogue customers. Not saying you are wrong, just got my cynical head on atm :)

Re: letter - no price rise but less channels
 

The only requirement is for the Sky digibox to be connected to a phone line for the first year if you want to tkae advantage of the free box and £1 installation. It doesn't have to be a BT line, my Sky boxes are connected to a NTL line. I know of several people that have disconnected the digibox from the phone line just after installation and have not been contacted by Sky. What is the problem with having the digibox connected to the phone line anyway?

There is a company near me that is sometimes offering used Sky digiboxes complete with minidish and installation for £100. These boxes come with a viewing card for FTA & FTV channels or you can take any Sky package and they don't need connecting to a phone line.

EDIT. I used to have both Sky and NTL DTV but got rid of NTL when Sky altered Sky+ subscription prices. I had hung on with NTL hoping that their DTV would improve but it didn't, just got worse. I had to have my NTL STB changed five times (never had to have a Sky box changed) and was continually having problems with freezing and pixallation on the NTL box. Last summer was an absolute nightmare with the NTL box which engineers put down to the very hot weather and said that there was no long term solution.

Re: letter - no price rise but less channels
 

Interesting comments - thanks Ianathuth :)

The phone line reluctance was because I wasn't sure if it had to be a BT line - & you & Hells Child have clarified that - cheers. :tu:

Re: letter - no price rise but less channels
 

That's a tad disappointing but the base pack still works out better value than digital IMO. The only big loss to me would be UK Gold and to a lesser extent VH1 :(

edit - it would be quite nice if they could redo the numbering as the current ones will look daft when none of the channel packs that they are in order with exist.

Re: letter - no price rise but less channels
 

The analogue base pack looks good value. They have decent channels for a lot oess than the digital base pack which is basically Freeview plus shopping channels.

Wanted also to comment on the point about channels renewing/not renewing their analogue carriage. ntl is never going to get people off analogue and onto digital if it keeps renewing the analogue contracts. It should be doing far more to get people onto digital and a better value digital base pack would help.

Re: letter - no price rise but less channels
 

Analogue cable seems to be a bit of a rip off really, because quite a few channels are timeshare channels. I used to hate waiting till 8pm to watch bravo because the programs i liked on that channel were on before 8pm plus i didnt want to stop watching trouble because there were some shows that i liked but were on after 8pm thats why i went to sky.

How much are the premium channels on ntl analogue e.g. sky sports, sky movies.

Re: letter - no price rise but less channels
 

sky sports 1 I think is 13 a month same with no 2 if you have both together I think its 18 a month and you get sky sports 3 free with either 1 or 2

incidently we only have sky sports 1,2,3 no sky sports extra

also only 2 movie channels that I am aware of we dont get sky premier 1,2,3,4 etc.

Re: letter - no price rise but less channels
 

Good point abut the 'time sharing' - it also happens with 'discovery home & leisure' & the proper 'discovery channel'. :)

Sky Movies 1 costs me £14 a month :erm:

- anyone want to come back & tell me what a 600k BB on SACM, 2x digibox, 2x phoneline on full 'family pack' package would cost me, from NTL - what I have on analogue is currently £74.98? per month.

Re: letter - no price rise but less channels
 

BB - £24.99
Extra digibox - £15.00
Family Pack - £28.00
Extra phoneline - £6.00

NB there are deals out there m8. :)

Re: letter - no price rise but less channels
 

This is what I got from the NTL site

Setup total:Monthly total:£ 0.00 £73.99

INTERNET OFFERS 600K Broadband Internet £24.99 per month
TELEPHONE PACKAGES It's as simple as 3-2-1 Standard.ÂÂÂà ‚£9.50 per month
(Remember you need an ntl telephone package before you can buy our tv package or dial up service)
2nd TELEPHONE LINE 2nd Phone Line£6. 00 per month
TELEVISION PACKAGE Family Pack£18 .50 per month
EXTRAS Additional set top boxes£1 5.00 per month
Install charge£ 75.00 one time
Installation Discount-£75.00
one time Total£0 .00
one time Total Monthly Charge£ 73.99
One-time Charges £0.00

Here is a link http://sales.ntl.com/newdesign/offers.jsp

fill out the postcode and then read the offers and add/remove what you want

Re: letter - no price rise but less channels
 

Many thanks Julian, Nemesis - looks like the price isn't going to be a problem;)

Cheers Guys :)

Re: letter - no price rise but less channels
 

Don't forget that if you have itemised billing that is an extra £1.00 per line as well Gaz. :)

Re: letter - no price rise but less channels
 

ok - thanks, I do get an itemised bill, so I guess that will apply. Price-wise, overall it looks like changing to digital would not be a problem. I will wait for the letter to arrive, call them in a suitably aggrieved manner & see what they can offer;)