NTL should switch to a digital only service!

[spiderplant]

Originally Posted by Pob!

And the new high-def broadcasts being trialled by Sky use 15Mhz of bandwidth,

Are you sure about that? Or do you mean 15Mbps?

[rnb14]

Slighty OT - Telewest will be turning off ALL analogue sevices on their network by the end of March 2005 (info recieved from Telewest insider)

[dave_herts]

The crafty way to "encourage" analogue customers who live in a digital area, is to make the anlogue service more expensive than the equivalent digital, and have an incentive program to upgrade.

When NTL started charging for dialup internet access, they also had the 128k Broadband which was more or less the same price as what the dialup was going to be, that was enough to get BB installed, and junk the slow dial up service.

[Pob!]

Originally Posted by spiderplant

Are you sure about that? Or do you mean 15Mbps?

Well this is confusing, and a google search uncovers lots of info, but although digital data throughput is measured in bits per second, HDTV or any digital TV broadcast is still said to use 'bandwidth' to express how much room is needed to deliver the signal. In japan the bandwidth needed to supply one channel is 20Mhz, but using compression in the USA they can fit one HDTV and two standard channels into a 6mhz feed, so there is a real range of figures.
http://www.pbs.org/opb/crashcourse/d...g/squeeze.html
Whichever way you look at it though, HDTV will use up a lot more room than existing digital broadcasts.
Pob!

[Pob!]

Originally Posted by dave_herts

The crafty way to "encourage" analogue customers who live in a digital area, is to make the anlogue service more expensive than the equivalent digital, and have an incentive program to upgrade.

When NTL started charging for dialup internet access, they also had the 128k Broadband which was more or less the same price as what the dialup was going to be, that was enough to get BB installed, and junk the slow dial up service.

Hmm - maybe you should turn that on it's head and suggest digital is made cheaper? At present the analogue base package inc telephone is £13.50m onth - the way I see it, that means I pay £4 per month for channels like Sky1, MTV, ITV2, E4, etc
The base digital pack is £19.50m onth inc telephone - so thats £6month extra for, well, nothing - actually less channels (no MTV), and a suspect picture and sound quality and the fabled interactive services.
BTW, Telewest offer a digital base pack indentical to NTL's for £14.50 per month. Sadly though, I am in an NTL only area.
Pob!

[garyparson]

I can't belive that there are that many neanderthal's on analogue still..! The whole point of cable is to go digital... Switch them off now, they're holding us back in the dark ages, time to shape up or ship out.

Wonder what percentage of these muppets watch it on black and white haha..

[ian@huth]

Originally Posted by garyparson

I can't belive that there are that many neanderthal's on analogue still..! The whole point of cable is to go digital... Switch them off now, they're holding us back in the dark ages, time to shape up or ship out.

Wonder what percentage of these muppets watch it on black and white haha..

Don't forget that many of these "neanderthal muppets" live in areas that can only receive NTL Analogue. If you lived in such an area in a property that for one reason or another couldn't receive Sky or Freeview would you just have channels 1 -5 or would you take Analogue?

[spiderplant]

Originally Posted by Pob!

Well this is confusing, and a google search uncovers lots of info

I can explain... On UK satellite, QPSK modulation is used. (Simplifying a little)each transmitted symbol carries two bits of data, so the bit rate is double the bandwidth.

See http://www.educatorscorner.com/media/AN_5965-7160E.pdf if you want to know a load more about this.

I think the BSKYB HDTV trial will use up to 15Mbps, but I'm not certain.

Originally Posted by Pob!

Whichever way you look at it though, HDTV will use up a lot more room than existing digital broadcasts.
Pob!

Only if you use the same compression technology (e.g. MPEG-2). New technologies are on their way which will get higher quality from the same bitrate (eg. MPEG-4 and WMV9).

[altis]

Perhaps they're gonna use DVB-S2 instead of DVB-S - I dunno.

http://www.tandbergtv.com/pdfs/dvbinfo.pdf

[Pob!]

Originally Posted by spiderplant

I can explain... On UK satellite, QPSK modulation is used. (Simplifying a little)each transmitted symbol carries two bits of data, so the bit rate is double the bandwidth.

See http://www.educatorscorner.com/media/AN_5965-7160E.pdf if you want to know a load more about this.
Thank you for the link.
I think the BSKYB HDTV trial will use up to 15Mbps, but I'm not certain.


Only if you use the same compression technology (e.g. MPEG-2). New technologies are on their way which will get higher quality from the same bitrate (eg. MPEG-4 and WMV9).

Well compression is the key - analogue broadcasts are not compressed at all, therefore (with a good signal) provide the best quality. Digital TV at present is analogous to MP3's, rather than CD's, as it is apparent that quality is lost. In fact the audio bitrate of didital TV is similar, or even lower than, a typical MP3.
Now if they do switch to Mpeg4, then so much the better - it's not exactly a new technology, and most of us have seen great quality XviD or DivX video. Suprised they did'nt switch to Mpeg4 ages ago. But even so, it is still a lossy compression. I'd like to see us moving forward, not backwards!
Pob!

[Pob!]

Originally Posted by garyparson

I can't belive that there are that many neanderthal's on analogue still..! The whole point of cable is to go digital... Switch them off now, they're holding us back in the dark ages, time to shape up or ship out.

Wonder what percentage of these muppets watch it on black and white haha..

Well I think only a neanderthal would blindly fall for the idea that digital is always better in any circumstances. It is not. A cheap digital camera is not as good as a decent SLR film camera. An MP3 is nowhere near as good as CD audio track (which in itself is compressed), a digital watch is not as good as a machanical one - anyone remember the early days of the digital age, when Sinclair produced the 'stunning' red LED watches? How many of us wear digital watches now? Not always better...
Pob!

[Tristan]

Originally Posted by Pob!

Well compression is the key - analogue broadcasts are not compressed at all, therefore (with a good signal) provide the best quality. Digital TV at present is analogous to MP3's, rather than CD's, as it is apparent that quality is lost. In fact the audio bitrate of didital TV is similar, or even lower than, a typical MP3.
Now if they do switch to Mpeg4, then so much the better - it's not exactly a new technology, and most of us have seen great quality XviD or DivX video. Suprised they did'nt switch to Mpeg4 ages ago. But even so, it is still a lossy compression. I'd like to see us moving forward, not backwards!
Pob!

Digital TV will always use lossy compression, unless some genius can come up with a lossless codec that can compress things to the same size.

Still, using lossy compression doesn't always mean the end result is crap -- you'd be *very* hard pushed to tell the difference between a JPEG picture and an uncompressed bitmap, for example, without a magnifying glass, yet the first may be just 10% of the size. Likewise, an MP3 encoded at 192kbps (with a decent encoder) is very difficult to differentiate from the original CD, and at 256k it's damn near impossible for most types of sounds.

I don't know where you get your claim that the audio bitrate is low for DTV. I don't know about satellite-sourced channels, but this is certainly not the case for channels taken from DTT.

[Tristan]

Originally Posted by Pob!

Well I think only a neanderthal would blindly fall for the idea that digital is always better in any circumstances. It is not. A cheap digital camera is not as good as a decent SLR film camera. An MP3 is nowhere near as good as CD audio track (which in itself is compressed), a digital watch is not as good as a machanical one - anyone remember the early days of the digital age, when Sinclair produced the 'stunning' red LED watches? How many of us wear digital watches now? Not always better...
Pob!

For the record, CD audio isn't compressed, it's stored as PCM data. Purists claim that the relatively narrow frequency range for CDs makes them sound more "artificial" than vinyl, but I think there's a good deal of psychology in that.

But then NICAM sound on the TV does much the same thing, so I guess there's no getting away from it.

[garyparson]

Originally Posted by ianathuth

Don't forget that many of these "neanderthal muppets" live in areas that can only receive NTL Analogue. If you lived in such an area in a property that for one reason or another couldn't receive Sky or Freeview would you just have channels 1 -5 or would you take Analogue?

What part of the uk can't recieve Sky?

I was refering to the people who can get it but choose to live in the past.

Originally Posted by Pob!

Well I think only a neanderthal would blindly fall for the idea that digital is always better in any circumstances. It is not. A cheap digital camera is not as good as a decent SLR film camera. An MP3 is nowhere near as good as CD audio track (which in itself is compressed), a digital watch is not as good as a machanical one - anyone remember the early days of the digital age, when Sinclair produced the 'stunning' red LED watches? How many of us wear digital watches now? Not always better...

Maybe so, but in this case you'd be wrong.

Originally Posted by garyparson

Maybe so, but in this case you'd be wrong.

care to back up that statement - in my opinion, in every case the original analogue data will always be superior to the digital sample