Whats betters Pace or Samsung, and how do i get a samsung one?

[DaveC]

I have heard it said that the Samsung is quicker at switching channels and also on interactive. Depends what the engineer has available at the time, I got a Samsung about a couple of weeks ago and its no worse than the Pace.

[popper]

the samsung has a faster CPU in it(it is cheaper now than the old one), so in that respect, its better for running the crumby Liberate middleware GUI etc,but all told, its still CPU bound as there is still no GFx chip as such to offload the display processing, rather like trying to run quake through and old CGA ISA card (ISA came before pci or AGP, never mind PCx).

the links to the pace and samsung stb's (and the tvdrive and the now binned AVC stb)are on this message board somewere with the specs but i cant find them right now, perhaps someone can find them and add them here to re-read again, then we can continue with the links to todays type of spec and price you could get.

as a start that http://www.pegasosppc.com/gallery.php?id=128 PPC SOC+ is being sold for $99 and being made in batches of 1000 i think it is, the more you make the cheaper it becomes.

---------- Post added at 20:17 ---------- Previous post was at 19:51 ----------

its no worse than the Pace

well my samsung 2100c, doesnt seem so good in the sound department to me, iv got a so called sound under problem, were the voice track should always be louder than the backtrack but isnt on this stb, years ago i had a pace and that had perfect sound in comparison,its not a scart lead problem, i suspect its a firmware problem in the wrong setting being set and the fact the programmers didnt see fit to add in an option to switch mono/st right:left etc.....

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by popper

as a start that http://www.pegasosppc.com/gallery.php?id=128 PPC SOC+ is being sold for $99 and being made in batches of 1000 i think it is, the more you make the cheaper it becomes.

OK... Assume NTL has 4 million STBs (I don't know if they do, but I suspect that is a fair estimate). Now multiply that $99 by 4 million. Taking into account bulk discount, reduce it to $50. Thats $200,000,000

That's without the cost of all the back-end equipment Liberate provide, which would probably need to be replaced, and would probably add another few million to the cost.

Now, even taking into account both the exchange rate, and a possible further reduction in cost, I hope you can see it's still going to cost NTL between £50 and £100 million to change all the boxes.

In short, I don't think they'll be changing from Liberate anytime soon.

[Toto]

Originally Posted by Stuart C

OK... Assume NTL has 4 million STBs (I don't know if they do, but I suspect that is a fair estimate). Now multiply that $99 by 4 million. Taking into account bulk discount, reduce it to $50. Thats $200,000,000

That's without the cost of all the back-end equipment Liberate provide, which would probably need to be replaced, and would probably add another few million to the cost.

Now, even taking into account both the exchange rate, and a possible further reduction in cost, I hope you can see it's still going to cost NTL between £50 and £100 million to change all the boxes.

In short, I don't think they'll be changing from Liberate anytime soon.

Now, that's the kind of make sense answer I was looking for.

My Samsung STB is better that the Pace I had, its much more responsive.

Can anyone on the Telewest side tell us what the TV Drive is like at all, compared with a standard set top box?

---------- Post added at 21:19 ---------- Previous post was at 21:17 ----------

Originally Posted by DaveC

I have heard it said that the Samsung is quicker at switching channels and also on interactive. Depends what the engineer has available at the time, I got a Samsung about a couple of weeks ago and its no worse than the Pace.

It is better on interactive, and the guide loads in about a second. The warm up time is a little longer, but still, its a better box, and better looking than the Pace too.

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by Toto

Now, that's the kind of make sense answer I was looking for.

My Samsung STB is better that the Pace I had, its much more responsive.

I personally find the Samsung is better. Having said that, it replaced an ageing Pace 1000..

[spiderplant]

Originally Posted by popper

as a start that http://www.pegasosppc.com/gallery.php?id=128 PPC SOC+ is being sold for $99 and being made in batches of 1000 i think it is, the more you make the cheaper it becomes.

TBH, I can't see many ntl customers going for a dead PC board sat on top of their TV. Try throwing in two tuners, QAM demod, descrambler, smartcard reader, video decoder, PAL encoder, SCART switch, UHF modulator, case, power supply, front panel, remote control, cable modem and a few licence fees - then see how far $99 gets you.

Originally Posted by Stuart C

Now, even taking into account both the exchange rate, and a possible further reduction in cost, I hope you can see it's still going to cost NTL between £50 and £100 million to change all the boxes.

Add a zero and you'd be close.

Originally Posted by popper

well my samsung 2100c, doesnt seem so good in the sound department to me, iv got a so called sound under problem, were the voice track should always be louder than the backtrack but isnt on this stb, years ago i had a pace and that had perfect sound in comparison,its not a scart lead problem, i suspect its a firmware problem in the wrong setting being set and the fact the programmers didnt see fit to add in an option to switch mono/st right:left etc.....

Interesting, would that explain why, for example, my samsung 2100c does sound during the programme for ITV4 (117), but has no sound during the adverts?

(my setup is a little unusual, as I use a pc based tv card connected to a dvd/vhs combo, sound is connected via 3.5mm ex the tv card & also via left & right coax to the combo - sound always works with the DVD/VHS combo box switched on, but is selective, as above, when it is off )

Originally Posted by Stuart C

That's technically possible now. It hasn't happened, and, TBH, I don't think it ever will. TV screens (even large, hi-def plasmas) don't even BEGIN to compare with cinema screens. An example. I was watching "The Departed" last night at the Odeon Liecester Square. I was watching it on a screen that was (at a guess) around 60 ft diagonally, and listening to a sound system that cost nearly £100,000. Now, your average multiplex doesn't compare to that, but the picture and sound are still an awful lot more impressive than any home cinema system.

I agree totally, I very much prefer the cinema experience, the size of the screen and the sound!
But sadly, peoples habits will dictate what happens next, I have been to many a film at my local cinema where they must wonder why the hell they bother paying the wages for the staff, they cannot be recouping the money from the punter to survive too long
Piracy has a lot to do with what will happen next, I have turned down many an offer of a pirate disc knowing that although I have to wait a bit longer the cinema experience will be worth the wait.
What I heard would or could happen is when a major film is due to be released it will coincide with it being made available to department stores where you would go along pop in your money, select your film, it will whizz off in next to no time and you will take it home on a limited life, ofcourse this brings in other issues such as the hardware.
Time waits for no man

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by spiderplant

Add a zero and you'd be close.

Well, it was based on a lot of guesswork..

---------- Post added at 11:42 ---------- Previous post was at 11:35 ----------

Originally Posted by arcamalpha2004

What I heard would or could happen is when a major film is due to be released it will coincide with it being made available to department stores where you would go along pop in your money, select your film, it will whizz off in next to no time and you will take it home on a limited life, ofcourse this brings in other issues such as the hardware.
Time waits for no man

The plan for the original DIVX (nothing to do with the CODEC of the same name) was that this would happen. The discs would be heavily encrypted, and rights protected. The customer would then "buy" the right to watch them for a certain period of time. It didn't take off, and Circuit City eventually closed the DIVX project.

[popper]

Originally Posted by spiderplant

TBH, I can't see many ntl customers going for a dead PC board sat on top of their TV. Try throwing in two tuners, QAM demod, descrambler, smartcard reader, video decoder, PAL encoder, SCART switch, UHF modulator, case, power supply, front panel, remote control, cable modem and a few licence fees - then see how far $99 gets you.


Add a zero and you'd be close.

are you being serious spiderplant?,its hard to tell, "dead PC board", what does that mean?.

its a developers embeded board (with a bios that can take any x86pci card as standard)and your never going to see ANY other developers board of that spec at anywere near that price, its not meant to be taken as the final thing, and i thought it would be clear to anyone remotely tech that ofcourse those standard (generic off the shelf, ie cheap)parts would need to be included or it wouldnt make a very good DVB box now would it.

its also werth mentioning that the current £150 charge NTL:tw make against an unreturned stb also makes a profit for ntl, as in, the stb does not cost ntl £150 but less.

i guess its an easy way to try and dismiss the idea though, i take it your happy with the current stb with all its limitations then and indeed think it can support much of ntl's offering for the next 5 years?.

and thats after you (i assume you do) know that just about every other product comeing to the DVB table or real soon now, is already far better speced.

---------- Post added at 16:43 ---------- Previous post was at 15:01 ----------

http://informitv.com/articles/2004/0...elewestandntl/
"10 May 2004

At the end of April, Liberate Technologies filed under Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code. The company says it hopes to emerge from bankruptcy within four to six months."

http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=122527
"News Release

Monday 10 May 2004, 22:13 GMT
Monday 10 May 2004BUSINESSTECHNOLOGYLiberate TechnologiesLiberate Announces Subscription License Agreement with ntl - UK's Largest Cable Operator

SAN MATEO, California, May 10 /PRNewswire/ --
- ntl Signs Long-term License with Guaranteed 1.3 Million Deployments "

http://www.liberate.com/
liberate couldnt stay listed so went downsized and private
"Effective December 20, 2005, Liberate is no longer a reporting company under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and accordingly, will no longer be filing reports, including annual, quarterly or current reports under the Exchange Act. Liberate previously effected a 250,000-for-1 reverse stock split of its common stock, which was adopted by its board and subsequently approved by its stockholders, as part of a "going-private" transaction. Further information about the reverse stock split and the related deregistration of Liberate's common stock can be found in Liberate's various prior SEC filings at www.sec.gov. Current investors may also contact Liberate at (650)330-8960. We thank you for your continued support. "


regarding liberate and its very limited capabilitys

[edit] i removed the direct link as i dont think its wise having everyone trying the (as i said) crumby Emmy liberate emulater :8)
Unsupported elements will generally be disabled by the Liberate transcoding server. Use of these technologies may cause strange behaviour or errors.
Do not use the following, as these are not supported; HTTP 1.1, JavaScript 1.2 , HTML 4, Plug-ins, Java, Applets, VBScript, XML, DOM 1, Cascading Style Sheets, and Active X controls.
Of the supported standards, there are the following exceptions and/or bugs:
HTML 3.2

• Don’t use sound
• Don’t use Image maps
• Don’t use mailto links
• Don’t use null values in drop-down menu options or use drop-down menu’s with a large number of menu options
• Don’t use graphics as form ‘submit’ buttons unless using workaround
• Remove External and Broken links

JavaScript 1.1

• Don’t use "document.write" (use dynamic tables instead)
• Don’t use Alert boxes
• Use Liberate compliant cookie code

HTTP

• Ensure only HTTP 1.0 compliant data is presented to ntl’s servers
• Avoid complex server-side redirects
• Don’t use HTTP Get for very long URL’s (e.g. over 1kb), use HTTP Post instead

For working alternatives to unsupported features and code extensions, please see Liberate’s Content Developers Guide (Content Development Kit) and Liberate’s guide to Supported JavaScript. They can be found in the "downloads" section.
N.B. If you are thinking about using NetRequest, please contact your contact delivery manager for more information, as it may not be supported. Last updated: 18 October 2002

the so called wonderful backroom liberate kit equates to
http://informitv.com/glossary/liberate/
"The Liberate software platform consists of server software to transcode XML or HTML content and a Mediacast server to carousel broadcast data. Client browser software in the set-top box renders applications to the screen and manages user interaction."

ohh how sweet a far better, far more powerful fully tcp:ip/UDP equiped rebol core and rebol view would be in conparison to liberate ,and way back in 2000.
http://www.rebol.com/
http://www.rebol.com/ios-intro.html

---------- Post added at 17:40 ---------- Previous post was at 16:43 ----------
they cant even get that right, they dont use multicasting in a custom comercial deployment...
http://informitv.com/articles/2006/0...ringaroundthe/
"
27 September 2006
Peering around the corner of digital media distribution

Peer-to-peer delivery was a major theme at a London conference on digital distribution for film and television. While technology can provide low-cost global distribution, issues of rights, licensing and regulation remain as complex as ever.

Kevin Baughan, head of technology strategy at UK cable operator NTL:Telewest described an experiment to accelerate downloads using a peer-to-peer delivery system augmented with a server from CacheLogic."

http://informitv.com/articles/2006/0...alsbittorrent/
12 February 2006
« Prev | Index | Next »

"NTL trials BitTorrent video downloads using CacheLogic

Cable television company NTL, the leading consumer broadband provider in the UK, is to trial a legal peer-to-peer video download service in association with BitTorrent and Cachelogic.

The small scale technical trial is expected to begin in April and will feature a large variety of licensed video material, including popular movies, music videos and television programmes.
BitTorrent peer-to-peer, or P2P, client software will be combined with content caches from CacheLogic to accelerate the delivery of downloads and offset network costs. The companies say that using the high-speed NTL network this will provide “ground-breaking download speeds of broadcast quality content”."

[Stuart]

I never said the Liberate back end stuff was wonderful. I merely pointed out that it would cost NTL an awful lot of money to replace. Unless you don't consider half a billion pounds (taking my £50,000,000 estimate and adding an extra zero as spiderplant said) to be a lot of money.

---------- Post added at 00:53 ---------- Previous post was at 00:48 ----------

One final thing I have to say on this subject. IF NTL should decide to replace Liberate (which, as it is at the core of their DTV system, means they would have to effectively build a new DTV system), I doubt they would come to forums such as this. They would probably consult experts in the field. While I will concede that it is possible that we do have such experts amongst our membership, we have no proof that any member here is.

[lostandconfused]

Originally Posted by popper

its also werth mentioning that the current £150 charge NTL:tw make against an unreturned stb also makes a profit for ntl, as in, the stb does not cost ntl £150 but less.

where did you get that info from? im positive they cost a lot more than 150

[RealDiamond]

when i moved telewest didnt even want the box or modem back. told me to bin it all.

[popper]

Originally Posted by Stuart C

I never said the Liberate back end stuff was wonderful. I merely pointed out that it would cost NTL an awful lot of money to replace. Unless you don't consider half a billion pounds (taking my £50,000,000 estimate and adding an extra zero as spiderplant said) to be a lot of money.

---------- Post added at 00:53 ---------- Previous post was at 00:48 ----------

One final thing I have to say on this subject. IF NTL should decide to replace Liberate (which, as it is at the core of their DTV system, means they would have to effectively build a new DTV system), I doubt they would come to forums such as this. They would probably consult experts in the field. While I will concede that it is possible that we do have such experts amongst our membership, we have no proof that any member here is.

im rather bored of the humdrum threads so i thought id bump this thread and see if anyone wants to give their thoughts/ideas.

while you make some good points as usual stuart, i do think the maths are rather high, its fact that NTL and C&W before them just seem to take whatever the wholesellers are dishing out at the time rather than commission a box, (rather like ordinary people going down the local supermarket and seeing whats available cheap today) and so are paying lowest price for lowest spec tech currently.

remember they were commited to the so called open platform but never got around to opening the thing up to 3rd partys, and that as everyone knows by now, i think thats hit the profit margins and inovation for the UK cable markets in a very big way.

as for the 'They would probably consult experts in the field', well look were we are today, and were we should have been by now, so their so called experts track record isnt very inovative or even profitable to date(except for the experts bank ballance etc)infact barely getting by comes to mind.

if infact they had bothered to come to this and other places to see what the techy people/early adaptors and even the ordinary users were saying and asking for, then perhaps NTL:tw would today be in far better shape finantially to the creditors, and then perhaps be able to find some new capital investment from the shareholders and VC's.

if NTL:tw wernt in such a finantial mess then they wouldnt need to find all this capital outlay all in one go as then they would only pay (or rather the SH/CR/VC's would pay) for shipped product as and when it was delivered so thats far easyer to finance long term or you wouldnt be seeing the Samsung stb's replacing the old pace boxs now would you?.

on the matter of 'replace Liberate', they wouldnt need to as such, just dump the old, and switch to the new, as all the new stuff would need to do in the interim, is know how to talk liberate network codes and use that until any new system was fully tested and working, (thats the open platform tcp:ip/udp/html/etc for you,) its commonly known as a software wrapper and every programmer and tech people know about it.

ragarding that basic developers board ,perhaps the readers would look at the pdf to see just were the genesi EFIKA board and its like are intended to be used, a vast area of profit, far bigger than desktops and growing fast
http://www.freescale.com/files/ftf_2...2006_AA117.pdf

Originally Posted by popper

im rather bored of the humdrum threads so i thought id bump this thread and see if anyone wants to give their thoughts/ideas.

while you make some good points as usual stuart, i do think the maths are rather high, its fact that NTL and C&W before them just seem to take whatever the wholesellers are dishing out at the time rather than commission a box, (rather like ordinary people going down the local supermarket and seeing whats available cheap today) and so are paying lowest price for lowest spec tech currently.

remember they were commited to the so called open platform but never got around to opening the thing up to 3rd partys, and that as everyone knows by now, i think thats hit the profit margins and inovation for the UK cable markets in a very big way.

as for the 'They would probably consult experts in the field', well look were we are today, and were we should have been by now, so their so called experts track record isnt very inovative or even profitable to date(except for the experts bank ballance etc)infact barely getting by comes to mind.

if infact they had bothered to come to this and other places to see what the techy people/early adaptors and even the ordinary users were saying and asking for, then perhaps NTL:tw would today be in far better shape finantially to the creditors, and then perhaps be able to find some new capital investment from the shareholders and VC's.

if NTL:tw wernt in such a finantial mess then they wouldnt need to find all this capital outlay all in one go as then they would only pay (or rather the SH/CR/VC's would pay) for shipped product as and when it was delivered so thats far easyer to finance long term.

on the matter of 'replace Liberate', they wouldnt need as such to just dump the old and switch to the new, as all the new stuff would need to do in the interim is know how to talk liberate network codes and use that until any new system was fully tested and working, its commonly known as a software wrapper and every programmer and tech people know about it.

ragarding that basic developers board ,perhaps the readers would look at the pdf to see just were EFIKA and its like are intended to be used, a vast area of profit, far bigger than desktops and growing fast
http://www.freescale.com/files/ftf_2...2006_AA117.pdf

You make good points particularly about paying the least they can on the boxes, they have to be wary that not too many people decide the grass is certainly greener elsewhere, the loss of my £40 + per month to NTL is chicken feed, but start multiplying that figure by x amount and its a lot of cash.