Re: How bad is bad enough ???
 

I Is what I describe 'normal' for an NTL digital service or is it worth NTL either swapping the box or checking the signal ? It's kind of depressing.....

I have the same problem. I have had at least 5 visits from ntl engineers and when I show them a video of the "premiership" they agree the picture quality is awful.
It is not source as I watch many games down the pub and the sky picture is excellent.

I have had two new boxes - zero effect
I have had a new cable laid in street - zero effect
I have had levels adjusted many times and this causes pictures to freeze or blank if adjusted incorrectly but does not affect the picture quality problem.

My suspicion is that being in an old cable and wireless area may make the problem worse for me than for people in other areas - I cannot get broadband despite living in densely populated Wandsworth in London.

One engineer said ITV was especially bad as it had a low bandwidth channel as people could watch it via their aerials.

At least i get to go to the pub a lot tho :)

Re: How bad is bad enough ???
 

Is it on the Premiereship or other channels as well?
The encoders used for Sky and ntl (and again for exCWC) are different, so theres a difference.
However the same encoder in use for you in London is the same encoder as used to feed people in Manchester and indeed all in exCWC areas.
An increasingly common issue is that people are buying cheaper TV's which are too big for the distance they are viewed from. You should be sitting at least 5 times the diagonal size of the screen away. Many sit too close these days.

Re: How bad is bad enough ???
 

The encoders are different? Never knew that...

I was under the impression that the same basic MPEG streams were used on all platforms (apart from for Sky Sports).

Re: How bad is bad enough ???
 

All channels have it on fast moving pictures to some degree but some are worse than others, it seems to vary fairly randomly according to channel and time. I've watched poor pictures on say BBC (via ntl) and then seen a clip of the same match on sky news (via ntl) which seems much better!

I should make clear that the picture can be AWFUL - totally different scale from the slight pixellation one might notice on sky. When there is a big match (cup final or international etc on any channel) the quality does seem to improve as if they're making an effort!

I also recall an engineer saying the problem is that the "buffers" are filling up because of under capacity. I could certainly believe something along those lines as the street equipment in my area is probably relatively ancient and its unlikely that ntl can afford to spend any money modernising it. Oh, the engineer also said that this might explain why I sometimes get sound and picture annoyingly out of sync.

Um - sitting too close to the screen - err never thought of that :rolleyes: ;)