[Tristan]

Originally Posted by Simon M

Don't like it ... I'll happily show you the Exit ...

I would have thought the exit is the last thing Gary would want to see....

Originally Posted by shy_one

From your location - Nottinghamshire, you would probably be covered by the Nottingham area which has its feed from the Langley platform. AFAIK customers receiving Langley have SACM. It is Bromley platform which uses the cable modem in the STB for broadband.

Just for the record, customers in Bromley TV areas have been able to have SACMs for a good couple of years now. However, as yet, Langley customers cannot use 4010s or Samsungs for broadband.

Originally Posted by shy_one

They are two different platforms that arose from the merger between NTL (Langley) and Cable & Wireless Communications (Bromley) in 1999. Eventually when the renumbering goes ahead - end of this year? (as mentioned earlier in the thread), both platforms will have the same channel numbers. NTL is in the process of standardising its Digital TV on the Bromley platform.

It was actually the Cable & Wireless Consumer Corporation, which is why you still hear some NTL old-timers referring to it as "CoCo".

I would be very surprised to see renumbering before the end of the year, despite what NTL said in April. They've got to roll out 3.2 to every Bromley region first, and that has to be done pretty slowly, as it's likely to impact callcentres quite heavily. Then they'll have to mailshot every Bromley customer with a big "YOUR CHANNEL NUMBERS ARE CHANGING" leaflet, because changing the numbers can't be done by region like software downloads. Then they'll have to do the actual change, which is a very simple job, but will call callcentre meltdown the next day. And they've got to do this all before the end of November, because they freeze everything in December to minimise the risk of things going wrong over the peak Christmas period.

Of course, there's nothing to stop them re-jiggiing the Langley numbers over the next couple of months, but I would have thought they'd want to do the two platforms at roughly the same time, and in any case they've got VOD rollouts to be getting on with...

Originally Posted by shy_one

I believe the Bromley platform is more technically advanced than the Langley platform.

Michael

There was a time when this was true, but that was long ago. The last update to the Bromley platform was in June 2003; this release enabled "red button" ETV, but was/is painfully slow, and has some shocking bugs (such as the infamous "crackly sound" one) that should not have been allowed out of Beta test, let alone been used by hundreds of thousands of customers every day for over two years.

In the mean time, there have been two major software releases for Langley, and another couple of minor fix releases for Samsung boxes. VOD is being rolled out to a great many Langley regions, but not one single Bromley one to date, and with no prospect of it in the near future -- according to a poster on DS, the new 3.2 code used in York isn't VOD-ready.

Still, it's not all doom and gloom. At least Bromley is at last getting some attention, and hopefully by the end of the year our software will be on a par with our Langley cousins. Telewest have got VOD working (mostly) on their Pace boxes, so the code exists -- it's just a matter of NTL integrating it into their existing software.


Sorry that my 1001st post has ended up being a bit of a rant. It's just frustrating as a Bromley customer to see "the other half" always getting the attention. First the NTLWorld dial-up fiasco (free 24/7 to Langley customers, not available to those on Bromley); then the Bromley broadband fiaso (rolled out painfully slowly, a long time after it was available in every Langley region, and initially only through an STB); even today there's the issue of caller display (NTL last year made it available across the entire Celtic business area, and thus to all Langley customers -- but only about 50% of Bromley customers can get this most basic of phone features, with no prospect of this ever changing); then there's the fact that Bromley has been stuck with awful slow, pink, unstable, pink, buggy, pink, crackly, pink software for two-and-a-half years, whist Langley users have enjoyed updates and VOD galore.

I guess it's possible -- and perhaps understandable -- that there might be an institutional bias within NTL towards Langley. It was, after all, their "own" platform, before they were forced to start dealing with CWC's systems after the takeover. It's natural that the engineers would want to try out new features first on the platform they were most familiar with. It's just surprising -- and disappointing -- that this has persisted for so long, and will continue to do so into 2006.