Re: Coming Soon to Virgin Media TV (2016) Vol 2
 

I also get the basic Worldbox app as part of TV XL.

Check out the apps section and the new Spanish Viva and Portuguese Coleta Worldbox apps, selecting these brings up a message stating: To see this you'll need to upgrade...

Re: Coming Soon to Virgin Media TV (2016) Vol 2
 

I fully understand what you're talking about, I am just surprised that FTA channels exist on cable as I was told several years ago they would be axed. If they're still there, great. It will give me something to look at when I do get a new cable pc card.

If most of the transport streams are encrypted, I accept some are not, how does he know what the contents of the streams actually contains, unless you are saying he has equipment which can crack VM's encyption system?

Re: Coming Soon to Virgin Media TV (2016) Vol 2
 

Ahhh right, didn't realise that they wanted extra money for these- think i'll pass :p

I assumed that niche channels like this would be free with XL in order to encourage those who want foreign language channels to upgrade or keep XL.

Re: Coming Soon to Virgin Media TV (2016) Vol 2
 

So is uncle Vince not likely to get Fox News? What a crying shame.

Never mind let's hope the new bloke in charge of tv acquisitions can provide me with some more tasty treats

Re: Coming Soon to Virgin Media TV (2016) Vol 2
 

If you look at the digitalbitrate site and click on "details" where you see an FTA channel, there is a screencap taken at the time of the scan. I think that should really be sufficient "proof".

The transport streams aren't encrypted, individual video / audio streams within them are. Things have moved on since the days of analogue, a transport stream can contain a mixture of encrypted and FTA services.

The individual streams still conform to the DVB standard, e.g. an encrypted video stream will still show up as, say, an MPEG2 Video stream and would be identified as such in the Program Map Table for that service. Basically, each video stream on each transport stream can be identified to an existing service and there were no additional, unidentified video streams. A Transport Stream Analyser does all of that automatically. Encryption doesn't "hide" the video streams within the transport stream, it just means there are additional ECM/EMM streams present to deal handle encryption and decryption in the set top box. The presence of the streams can be validated, that doesn't mean that the actual video/audio content of the streams can be decrypted and viewed (by the TS Analyser), that's simply not necessary.

Basically, encrypted channels carry extra streams to unscramble the contents of the video/audio streams in conjunction with the VM STB rather than hiding the streams. Again, the presence of these streams can be seen on the digitalbitrate site, which presumably uses some sort of TS analyser but uses a fixed template to display the results. Just click on "details" for an encrypted channel listed on that site, it will show the presence of the ECM streams and the type of encryption used.

The information on that site is accurate, although becoming out of date as the TS scanner appears to have been turned off recently.

Re: Coming Soon to Virgin Media TV (2016) Vol 2
 

I agree with others on Fox News; no smoke without fire. I can't see much launching in the summer besides Sky Sports Mix and the extra BBC Olympic channels. But hopefully the Autmn will usher in some treats. :)

Re: Coming Soon to Virgin Media TV (2016) Vol 2
 

It's not there yet but presumably they added the service label for a reason. Unless someone at VM is just trolling users of this forum. :p:

The head of tv acquisitions has apparently been reading old posts on the coming soon thread and has been busy acquiring foreign language content to entertain viewers during drunken evenings in their boxrooms. :D

Unfortunately he seems to want more cash for the privilege of viewing this content. :mad:

Re: Coming Soon to Virgin Media TV (2016) Vol 2
 

Oh what wonderful positivity old boy...;)

Re: Coming Soon to Virgin Media TV (2016) Vol 2
 

Fox news is coming we think by end of August.

Re: Coming Soon to Virgin Media TV (2016) Vol 2
 

Well we shall see....

Re: Coming Soon to Virgin Media TV (2016) Vol 2
 

We seen photos of Fox News SD Channel.

Re: Coming Soon to Virgin Media TV (2016) Vol 2
 

Erm, when exactly was I irritated? I was simply questioning the significance of 'testing channels'.

Why so sensitive?

Re: Coming Soon to Virgin Media TV (2016) Vol 2
 

What did the photo show exactly? A screenshot of actual video content or was it just EPG details? What Virgin Media region was the photo taken in?

Re: Coming Soon to Virgin Media TV (2016) Vol 2
 

Sorry, I could have sworn that you said earlier that VM were testing frequencies rather than actual channels.

Did I misunderstand that?

Re: Coming Soon to Virgin Media TV (2016) Vol 2
 

*sigh*

Misunderstood completely as the frequency tests are actually channels although not "new to virgin" just duplicates of VMs internal preview channels. I've also said that the BBC Olympic channels are running in the background.

Fox News, Arabic Hafla and the additional NDTV channels have been added to Service Description Tables. A quick explanation, the SDT lists service names, the type of service (TV or Audio basically) and it also lists the transport stream that the services are carried on and the service IDs. (A blind scan on a tv with a cable tuner would read these tables and add placeholders for the channels in case they ever appear).

On checking the transport stream IDs referred to in the SDT, the service IDs for Fox News, Arabic Hafla and the additional NDTV channels don't exist. It really depends on what you call a test. If you feel that the presence of a channel name on internal SI tables qualifies as a test, then feel free to consider this a test. If you feel that a test would involve carrying actual video and audio streams across the national network, these aren't tests.

I really wonder if you actually read my comment before submitting that reply. If you consider these to be tests, then testing a tv channel without video and audio wouldn't be a very advanced stage of testing.

It's a bit like being handed a treasure map, making your way to a remote island and finding an empty hole someone had started digging. You have a map but the treasure isn't there yet!