Quote:
Originally Posted by jj20x
That's about it, he said that examining the network information table might reveal more but with the hundreds of entries in there, he wasn't inclined to spend vast amounts of time trying to unravel it. On the whole, he said that cable tv is of little interest to the hobbyist. Most of what is carried on VM is encrypted and there is generally a much wider choice of FTA channels available on Freeview and satellite, so no incentive for anyone to explore DVB-C in this country.
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Plus, it wouldn't tell you whether a channel was going to launch or not anyway as cable is a closed off system, unlike satellite.
Satellite capacity costs money, so if someone wants to launch a channel on satellite they either have to do a deal with Sky, or with the satellite operator Astra. So when a test appears, knowing that this costs money to lease capacity, it is likely something will happen and a channel will launch.
But VM's cable system is their own. They could privately have every satellite channel on the cable system "testing", that wouldn't make any difference to cost as they're not renting capacity from anyone, its their's already.
The costs to VM come when they increase capacity and that last happened in 2010 when the amount of streams increased from around 36 to 48. Mediaboy has said new streams are testing in his area, but I have not seen them in my area yet.
Many of the tests are done when these new streams are created to check that they are working properly so that when and if VM want to launch new services, they can do so immediately, ie like when BT Sports channels launched. They just appeared.
When VM want to launch something, they will, and I doubt there will be many tests or anything to warn us about this before hand.
Analogue cable was more fun!
