Any one here testing the NTL S/A Tv drive

[Tristan]

Originally Posted by Wicked_and_Crazy

But there is a monthly charge. Has Sky dropped its + monthly charge since HD has been released?

They waive the charge for standard Sky Plus if you take Sky Sports and Movies. But remember that this box is the equivalent of Sky Plus HD, for which they charge an extra £10pm no matter what package you take.

[timetraveller]

I'm looking forward to getting the new NTL PVR and HD as soon as it is readily available. I presume that there will be a mad rush at the beginning but as I am not getting my new HD plasma TV until March 2007 hopefully things will have calmed down a little.
Something that concerns me though is the comments made in various forums regarding the availability of HD programmes for viewing. I assumed that if your NTL subscription included the movie channels you would automatically be able to view their HD programmes (except maybe the SKY Movies 10 HD Channel which isn't on NTL).
Is this true and if so what would be the incentive to subscribe to NTL HD if only ITV & BBC HD was available? I appreciate that the PVR with 3 digital tuners and HDD recording is a nice touch but is that enough to get someone to subscribe to HD?

Also, existing customers can waive the £75.00 installation charge by keeping their box and using in another room for £5 pcm but what if you already have a second box that you are paying £15pcm for? Can you cancel that one and save £10pcm or do you have to have a third STB you might not need?
Tony

[RamJet]

[quote=Has HDMI, USB, SATA, Optical out, 3 tuners, 160Gb Harddrive, 2 Scart sockets, RF socket, and lots of fancy other software, haven't much time on it, but to say it is a clone of Sky+ would be wrong considering the Scientific Atlanta TV drive has more features on it in one box than Sky's.
[/quote]

what i'm trying to work out is - having recorded lots of favorite TV progs on the TVD can you then output these progs onto some kind of backup - either into a proper DV recorder or onto the hard drive of your laptop

ie can you get DVD copies of your fav progs somehow

RJ

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by sollp

Yep,

Has HDMI, USB, SATA, Optical out, 3 tuners, 160Gb Harddrive, 2 Scart sockets, RF socket, and lots of fancy other software, haven't much time on it, but to say it is a clone of Sky+ would be wrong considering the Scientific Atlanta TV drive has more features on it in one box than Sky's.

I haven't used it, so I could be wrong, but I thought that in terms of physical features, the main advantage it has over Sky +HD is the three tuners. That is, of course, unless NTL are planning to actually use the SATA and USB ports. Bearing in mind that they never used the Serial port on my Pace and the USB port on my Samsung, I don't hold out much hope they will.

[RamJet]

the 3 tuners is a gr8t feature

but can you output the stored progs to a DVD recorder or a laptop ?

if not y not ? ? ?

I have MANY favorite progs 2 record

soon even a 160GB hard drive will be full

then what do you do ? ? ?

RJ

[jem]

As far as I know there is no reason why you can't plug the scart output of the box into the input of a DVD recorder and record that way. Now this would involve a digital to analogue and back to digital set of conversions so quality will suffer and also you will only be able to copy in 'real-time'.

I would expect the raw data files on the internal HD will be encrypted to stop direct digital copying and they can also 'prevent' or at least hinder analogue copying using macrovision for certain 'copy-protected' programmes.

Of course someone may well come up with some third party solution but bear in mind that the TV-Drive box is rented from NTL, unlike Sky+ which is the property of the subscriber so you won't be allowed to get access to the HD anyway.

[Stephen]

Yes you can record your stored programs onto DVD or VHS. Just plug them by scart into the 2nd scart socket on the TVD, there is an actual menu option for transfering recordings from the TVD, and you can still continue watching other channels.

[Tristan]

Of course you can attach a DVD recorder to the output of the box and use that as a backup device. There would probably be restrictions in doing this with the HDMI output -- you know how paranoid the Hollywood types are that anyone might get a second copy of something on another format that they didn't have to pay for again.

I think NTL will eventually enable the SATA facility on the boxes, they've just got bigger priorities at the moment (i.e. fixing the existing bugs). The only reason for not doing so would be pressure from those evil Hollywood people again: it would be very easy to take that SATA drive and connect it to a PC, and if the encryption was cracked...

Lastly, the serial and USB connection on the boxes are primarily there for diagnostic purposes. What would you want to use the serial port for anyway? The only use I can think of for the USB would be using a keyboard for TV e-mail, but does anyone actually use that any more?

[clayts]

Is the SCART out RGB enabled for those of us wanting to archive to DVD ?

[spiderplant]

Originally Posted by clayts

Is the SCART out RGB enabled for those of us wanting to archive to DVD ?

The TV SCART is, but the VCR SCART isn't. So you can't archive with RGB whilst watching something else.

[popper]

Originally Posted by RamJet

what i'm trying to work out is - having recorded lots of favorite TV progs on the TVD can you then output these progs onto some kind of backup - either into a proper DV recorder or onto the hard drive of your laptop

ie can you get DVD copies of your fav progs somehow

RJ

nope, NTL:tw didnt see fit to include that standard option in these stbs, apparently the newer AVC stbs did have that option (as well as tcp:ip content streaming to/from PC etc).

the only way your ever going to get access to the saved MPeg2HD content is to break the T&C and pull the HD off that and place into a PC with special software to read off the harddrive contents, not something for your average user to even consider.

you might be able to replay the content off to the video scart connected VHS video/external £80 argos DVD recorder (if they dont protect that also?), but dont count on that working for to long or expect good video conversion, all told its a mess currently for keeping quality recordings.

and that scart output will be re-downscaled output so as to meet the DVD 720x576 spec.

---------- Post added at 21:03 ---------- Previous post was at 20:48 ----------

Originally Posted by DarthYoda

Yes you can record your stored programs onto DVD or VHS. Just plug them by scart into the 2nd scart socket on the TVD, there is an actual menu option for transfering recordings from the TVD, and you can still continue watching other channels.

but your NOT simply transfering the raw ts or mpeg2, your sending it to the scart composite output and have to re-record that output with some device! (hvs/cd/dvd/computer video-input).

---------- Post added at 21:28 ---------- Previous post was at 21:03 ----------

Originally Posted by Tristan

Of course you can attach a DVD recorder to the output of the box and use that as a backup device. There would probably be restrictions in doing this with the HDMI output -- you know how paranoid the Hollywood types are that anyone might get a second copy of something on another format that they didn't have to pay for again.

I think NTL will eventually enable the SATA facility on the boxes, they've just got bigger priorities at the moment (i.e. fixing the existing bugs). The only reason for not doing so would be pressure from those evil Hollywood people again: it would be very easy to take that SATA drive and connect it to a PC, and if the encryption was cracked...

Lastly, the serial and USB connection on the boxes are primarily there for diagnostic purposes. What would you want to use the serial port for anyway? The only use I can think of for the USB would be using a keyboard for TV e-mail, but does anyone actually use that any more?

your not thinking big enough or inovative enough Tristan, it will never happen on these underpowered/underspeced tvdrives but theres lots of uses for the USB (and even the extreamly slow serial connection, but we will ignore these for now as its used as you say for diagnostics ).

i forget is the tvdrive USB 1.1 or 2.0 ? , it matters due to the speed you can move stuff over the interface, for instance you cant transfer a full TS(transport stream) over the old usb1.1,only part of it at one time.

basicly anything the current 3rd party DVB-T/-S USB cards can do, the stb could also do with that usb slot.

[Stephen]

Well the picture output still looks good, although I have only tried backing up to VHS.

True it won't be in HD or whatever but the point is the box lets you back up your recording via the scart to DVD or VHS. The box also removes the epg automatically from the Scart output, even if you were recording the channel you are watching the VCR scart does not output the EPG.

[Tristan]

Originally Posted by popper

your not thinking big enough or inovative enough Tristan, it will never happen on these underpowered/underspeced tvdrives but theres lots of uses for the USB (and even the extreamly slow serial connection, but we will ignore these for now as its used as you say for diagnostics ).

i forget is the tvdrive USB 1.1 or 2.0 ? , it matters due to the speed you can move stuff over the interface, for instance you cant transfer a full TS(transport stream) over the old usb1.1,only part of it at one time.

basicly anything the current 3rd party DVB-T/-S USB cards can do, the stb could also do with that usb slot.

Of course it would be possible to send the raw MPEG (or even, as you say, the entire transport stream) over a USB2 connection, or Ethernet port. But why would NTL allow such a thing? What's in it for them?

If nothing else, allowing people to make perfect digital copies of HD programmes on their PCs would land them in very hot water with the content providers -- people they want to keep on-side for VOD purposes.

One thing I *could* see happening would be allowing two TVDrives on a home network to share their recording libraries -- so you could watch something upstairs that had been recorded downstairs -- but only if all network traffic could be encrypted an it was all locked down so that it couldn't be intercepted.

It's annoying, but sadly it's a fact. Hollywood is completely paranoid about anybody watching anything they haven't paid for three or four times, and NTL have no choice but to go along with them.

[kibblerok]

How does it compare to the one ntl were originally planning?

[RS100]

So people testing this how are you finding it,