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Originally Posted by jfman
Surely then it would have made sense to scrap orders for the TVDrive and to extend the newer, more advanced and cheaper STB to Telewest areas.
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You'd have thought so, given that the MPEG4 version had a better specification, and that ntl: will now have to either replace all the TW boxes with MPEG4 versions nationwide when these MPEG2 ones are obsolete, or else spend even more money than intended putting extra equipment into all the Headends to downscale MPEG4 broadcasts to MPEG2 versions.
It really is a shame that the new guy from ex-TW who's in charge of this now (as posted earlier in this thread), is so shortsighted about the speed of technological development with HD broadcasting - and that everyone else in the UK i.e. Sky and the BBC so far, will be using MPEG4 systems for their operations that he's sticking with a method of distribution that will take up more bandwith, not less, and will cost more to implement over the long term - and may potentially reduce the amount of HD content available to customers because of the very system chosen by them to use for networks than going with the MPEG4 unit ordered by ntl:.
As yet however there's no official information on HDTV for ntl: areas, apart from a contradictory press release on another website, quoting from two different people in the ntl: media centre, and the "unofficial" but very useful information gleaned by Neptune in this thread.