Analogue Sky One in Mono

[Luminance]

For the last year I have been calling up customer services and complaining that the sound on Sky One is mono. I have had a number of engineers round, and they have told me that the problem is not at my end, it is at the "head end". They tell me that they will call the "head end" engineers to sort out the problem ....... Nothing happens, I live with it for a while, then get angry that I am not getting something that I am paying for and I call them again, and end up on the same merry-go-round of waiting for the guy to call, listening to the same excuse, and watching him go away again. The next one is due on Monday.

Does anyone know if there is a better way of going about this?

Also most of my other channels are in Mono, only the five terrestrial, MTV and UKHorizons are in stereo
The Mono ones are;-
Sky One, Eurosport, TCM, Discovery, ITV2, E4, Style and UKHistory. Should I be getting any of these in stereo??

Many thanks

[grum1978]

where do you live?

[russellelly]

Originally Posted by Luminance

For the last year I have been calling up customer services and complaining that the sound on Sky One is mono. I have had a number of engineers round, and they have told me that the problem is not at my end, it is at the "head end". They tell me that they will call the "head end" engineers to sort out the problem ....... Nothing happens, I live with it for a while, then get angry that I am not getting something that I am paying for and I call them again, and end up on the same merry-go-round of waiting for the guy to call, listening to the same excuse, and watching him go away again. The next one is due on Monday.

Does anyone know if there is a better way of going about this?

Also most of my other channels are in Mono, only the five terrestrial, MTV and UKHorizons are in stereo
The Mono ones are;-
Sky One, Eurosport, TCM, Discovery, ITV2, E4, Style and UKHistory. Should I be getting any of these in stereo??

Many thanks

I remember somebody reporting this before (might have been on dotcom) and unfortunately i can't remember the outcome, but here in glasgow all channels on ntl analogue are in stereo. Definately sounds like a head-end problem - perhaps someone living nearby you with analogue could tell us if they had trhe same problem - if you tell us where you are, that is!

[Ignition]

One lovely solution would be to go digital, shouldn't have any problems then with the sound being mono and picture will be of higher quality too.

Yes I do hate analogue cable and would love to see it get stopped, it munches loads of bandwidth on the HFC network unnecessarily and a complete analogue switch off would be lovely. Problem is different offers in each BU and different ones have different analogue packages at different prices.

[Neil]

Originally Posted by JustAnotherN00b

One lovely solution would be to go digital, shouldn't have any problems then with the sound being mono and picture will be of higher quality too.

It would??

Not from what I've seen of the two it wouldn't.

Yes I do hate analogue cable and would love to see it get stopped, it munches loads of bandwidth on the HFC network unnecessarily and a complete analogue switch off would be lovely. Problem is different offers in each BU and different ones have different analogue packages at different prices.

Oh stop moaning!

[paulyoung666]

how about moving over to sky , let me recommend you and i will get £30 of m&s vouchers , sorry i have no idea about your problem

[Ignition]

Originally Posted by Neil

It would??

Not from what I've seen of the two it wouldn't.

Oh stop moaning!

Our experience of the TV packages differs obviously.

Sure will stop moaning when you stop advertising ADSL on your sig, and look on the brighter side of ntl: from time to time - cynic :p

[MikeyB]

Originally Posted by Luminance

...Also most of my other channels are in Mono, only the five terrestrial, MTV and UKHorizons are in stereo
The Mono ones are;-
Sky One, Eurosport, TCM, Discovery, ITV2, E4, Style and UKHistory. Should I be getting any of these in stereo??

Many thanks

Apart from Sky One, that sounds about right from when I had analogue cable. Very few channels were in stereo. Just the 5 terrestrial, Sky One, MTV, VH1, and possibly the 2 or 3 movie channels.

If I remember correctly, there always used to be a problem with VH1, would switch in & out of stereo all the time!

[Nor]

All my channels are in mono, unless I watch through the scart which I don't like doing as it doesn't auto detect which aspect ratio the picture should be in.

[Luminance]

I live in the Lewisham area.
The engineer came this morning and said he had no idea what to do nor who I should speak to. So I'm on the phone again to customer services and they are going to get a monitoring engineer to call me (at least this is something different). And YES russellelly I did bring this up on the other nthell site and NO there was never a successful outcome, I'm still working on the same old issue....
Don't want digital purely because it is a huge hike in price for me, and from what I've seen the picture quality is not that great.

Thanks for your help everyone

[Tristan]

Originally Posted by Nor

All my channels are in mono, unless I watch through the scart which I don't like doing as it doesn't auto detect which aspect ratio the picture should be in.

Using the RF output, the sound will be mono as there's no NICAM encoder in the STB. The other thing confuses me though. Usually a scart connection is the preferred way to do widescreen signalling, using pin 8. What exactly does it do wrong?

Using an RF connection instead will lose you a considerable amount of picture and (as you have discovered) sound quality.