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Originally Posted by dd2k
i agree that on some channels the picture quality can be poor compared to the analouge broadcast, but i dont think we should keep analouge as a result of it.
If the analouge system was removed, rather just replacing the bandwidth with more sopping channels they should focus on the compression issues. if for example out of 10, a digital channel takes up 1 and an an anlouge channel takes up 4(cant remember the exact ratio), decrease the compression so that a digital channel uses 2, allowing better quality but still get the amount of channels
DD2K
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One analogue channel takes up as much bandwidth (8MHz) as a digital multiplex. The number of digital channels on this multiplex can vary according to the quality you want to get out of the resulting channels. For example, Sky Sports or the movie channels are pretty high quality, so there aren't many to a mux, whereas it's the opposite case for shopping channels.
Your argument that by reducing the number of analogue channels, NTL could up the quality of the digital ones works in theory, but is rather stumped by the fact that NTL don't encode the channels themselves, apart from a couple of exceptions. The feeds are all taken from DSat or DTT. So it doesn't matter how much space NTL give E4, it will always look crap because it's broadcast on satellite at a low bitrate.
On thing that very definitely could be improved if there was more bandwidth though would be the EPG. NTL could devote an entire mux to the broadcasting of EPG data, like Sky do, and we'd be back to 7 days...
(Of course, NTL could also use a digiguide style EPG using the interactive return path, which would be limited only be the amount of future info the TV companies release. I have no idea why they don't do this, other than the fact it would leave Videotron people high and dry.)