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Originally Posted by dhlennon
thx handyman
it would be interesting to know how many of NTL's subscriber base uses analogue tv services.
I'm aware that it's the government's intention to switch off analogue anyhow within the next few years, but I would guess that in reality trying to predict that is akin to them saying we "will/might/have a referendum/dunno/won't (select an answer)" on joining the Euro. If it was set in stone that might help NTL make that kind of decision.
Personally, stress personally, I would happily live without all the radio stations as I want TV not radio but I am sure the radio services are very popular with a lot of customers, and I assume they consume negligible bandwidth anyway.
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The government switching off analogue and ntl doing the same, are independent of each other, except for the five pass through cahnels BBC1, 2 ITV, CH4 &5). As you need an analogue STB to decode / unscramble the ntl signal, cable and terrestrial aerial transmission formats can be changed without reference to each other.
Sky a few years ago made the decision to drop analogue, hence they now have the capacity for all the digi channels (most of which are in any case a load of rubbish IMO). However they will have lost a proportion of customers who did not want to incur the costs of upgrade. For ntl the upgrade cost would be higher, as all the STB are provided by ntl, not as with SKy owned. As ever it's going to come down to economics.
If I'm correct, some ntl areas, can't get reliable digi TV yet? If so, I expect that's where ntls TV priorities are likely to lie, along with getting everyone onto the same single platform (bromley, Lnagley, CR3), to ease the future maintenance and then upgrade paths.