Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris
NTL was putting out all 5 public service channels on UHF frequencies you could tune on a TV directly, at least in Hemel Hempstead in the early 2000s it was because that’s what we used. There was no rooftop aerial on our first house and while there had been no active sub to cable in the house for years the wall box was still there and still connected to the tap in the street cab.
When the BBC started launching ‘digital channels’ as they were once known (like BBC 3) these were also available to us on analogue UHF this way. Occasionally cable-only channels were also receivable, like L!ve TV, which wasn’t much of a bonus TBH.  |
Hemel headend had at one time 8 analogue channels you could tune directly via the converters UHF bypass. BBC1 London, BBC2 London, ITV London, ITV Anglia, Channel 4, Channel 5, West Herts TV (Local channel with a studio on the top floor of Comtel's building on the Maylands estate, which closed when NTL took over) & a rolling programme guide. The cable VHF spectrum could only accomodate around 35 analogue channels, so when additional capacity was required, UHF spectrum was used (hence you could tune some of these channels directly on a TV if NTL had not removed the sync pulses).