Quote:
Originally Posted by carlwaring
I was going to as "So how are you getting VM's services then?" but I seem to recall there's something 'special' about Milton Keynes wrt cable services, isn't there?
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Yep, MK Cable TV system is weird. Every house in MK (except for those in the older surrounding areas) has a cable socket pre-installed and if you have an analogue TV you can use the cable socket to view the basic five channels and one or two others without a set top box and without any kind of subscription package from VM. The original idea behind this (when MK was first being built in the early/mid 70s) was that it would negate the use of roof top aerials.
To view the subscription channels (Sky 1, Sky Sports etc), however, you need an analogue VM set top box.
The cable TV system is still 'old school' UHF analogue and only carries around 30 channels. The situation is even more bizarre since we had the digital switch over a few weeks ago. Now VM take a digital signal and then convert it to UHF analogue for distribution over the MK cable TV system! Then you have a local covenant which prohibits the use the roof top aerials and satellite dishes which everybody now ignores, including MK Council who are the would be enforcers, because they know that freeview and freesat are now the only realistic free to air options available to MK residents. Until the old MK cable TV system is upgraded to digital it's effectively a lame duck as the few remaining users will eventually upgrade to modern digital TVs and will most likely choose to use freeview or satellite. The chances of an upgrade, however, are slim at best. BT own the lease on the infrastructure (which they lease to VM) and they're being as obstructive as possible in order to protect their position. At least until they've deployed their own FTTP/FTTC infrastructure in MK (and there are significant problems with that which I won't go into here). Meanwhile VM seem content with the status quo so long as it turns a profit, all be it a small and ever decreasing profit. Even if BT we're cooperative it remains to be seen whether VM would have the will and the resources to upgrade an antiquated cable system to DOCSIS. Especially bearing in mind that it would have to be a complete root and branch refit as some of cables to customer premises are aluminium and would need to be replaced with copper. More info at -
http://www.mkbag.org/