Thread: Will TV Drive subscription include future HD channels?
View Single Post
Old 12-12-2006, 10:17   #5
Stuart
-
 
Stuart's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: Somewhere
Services: Virgin for TV and Internet, BT for phone
Posts: 26,546
Stuart has a lot of silver blingStuart has a lot of silver blingStuart has a lot of silver blingStuart has a lot of silver blingStuart has a lot of silver bling
Stuart has a lot of silver blingStuart has a lot of silver blingStuart has a lot of silver blingStuart has a lot of silver blingStuart has a lot of silver blingStuart has a lot of silver blingStuart has a lot of silver blingStuart has a lot of silver bling
Re: Will TV Drive subscription include future HD channels?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris Howell View Post
Compare it to Sky HD+. Sure, you pay upfront for the box, and you pay £10 extra per month. But if I had Sky Sports, I would get Sky Sports HD for that extra tenner.

Now look at NTL. I've got Sky Sports and Family pack. If I get a TV Drive, that's an extra £10 per month.

£10 extra, for what?
  • HD Channels? What HD Channels? BBC One HD and erm.....well there's....erm....mmm....HD VOD movies and.....well I guess there's.....cough....urm......
  • PVR functionality? Had that since March via my own PVR - no doubt other customers also got fed up waiting on NTL's PVR solution and went out and brought one. Chase Play? Recording on Hard Drive? Sorry, been there and was doing that in time for the World Cup.
  • An 7-8 day EPG? Sorry, that should be standard. Certainly is for Freeview, Sky and BT Vision. What's NTL's excuse? We're told that "Cable is the future", and "if we can get it, we should." So why only 3 days on the EPG? (Don't even get me started on the mythical interactive app. known as BBC News Multiscreens).
  • A faster box? Sorry, why should I be paying extra to compensate for bad decisions NTL made in choosing hardware too slow to run their software? Why can't NTL write more efficient software to run faster on their Pace boxes?
Sure, credit where credit is due. TV Drive offers HDTV, HDTV VOD, and the ability to record 2 channels while watching another.

But, do you seriously think that I should pay £10 extra for TV Drive, and then pay extra on top of that to get Sky Sports HD?

Because, if that's how NTL is thinking.....then I'm probably off to Sky, and I doubt if I'll be the only one. NTL are in danger of pricing themselves out of the HDTV market, IMO, and the HDTV set I've ordered is going to be hungry for some 720p/1080i content.
In fairness, NTL haven't announced availability or pricing for any HD channels, and I, for one, would be shocked if they didn't match (or beat) the price of Sky+ HD. For them not to at least match the price would be commercial suicide..

As for the guide. Well, TBH, I have had a Tivo for years. This has up to two months of guide data. Similarly, I use Digiguide. This gives up to two months of data. Why, when Sky + and the TV drive have hard drives, are we limited to 7 or 8 days of guide data? It's not as if the boxes are limited in the amount of data they can recieve. Even assuming there is not enough bandwidth available on the TV signal, Sky + can dial in (as the Tivo does), and the TV Drive could just use some of the interactive bandwidth.
Stuart is offline   Reply With Quote