[Ignitionnet]

The upgrade consisted of switching off analogue channels, there was no upgrade as such.

I am unsure of the bit rate VM are using for HD, I would imagine they are only getting 2 or maybe 3 HD channels into the space of each analogue channel due to using 64QAM and MPEG-2.

The areas that are constrained will be sorted through when upstream uplift and 100Mbps deployments are complete - the uplift will take all areas currently stuck at 550MHz up to at least 750 and the 100Mbps service requires 256QAM channels so downstream laser loading issues will be sorted there as well to permit DTV multiplexes to go to 256QAM along with the EuroDOCSIS 3 downstreams.

EDIT: To give an idea of the bit rates required Sky use MPEG-4, more efficient than the MPEG-2 which VM use, and Sky Sports hits 16-17Mbps average wtih peaks at around 21Mbps during some events. Not going to get that and too much else into a 38Mbps multiplex.