General : Coming Soon to Virgin Media TV (2016) Vol 2

Originally Posted by RichardCoulter

I'm not sure what the minimum level of subscription is for Worldbox, as I receive it as part of XL.

Is it available as a stand alone service?

I didn't realise that Fox News was just a label at this stage and did not have video/audio streams.

I also get the basic Worldbox app as part of TV XL.

Check out the apps section and the new Spanish Viva and Portuguese Coleta Worldbox apps, selecting these brings up a message stating: To see this you'll need to upgrade...

[Horizon]

Originally Posted by jj20x

I'm guessing then that you have failed to understand the point of the last several posts you have replied to. The SDR hobbyist running the tests, used an SDR tuner with a DVD-C driver. Basically the same as a DVB-C PC card but far more stable across the entire frequency range and heavily shielded, so less likely to inject noise into the cable network than a basic DVB-C PC card.

I fully understand what you're talking about, I am just surprised that FTA channels exist on cable as I was told several years ago they would be axed. If they're still there, great. It will give me something to look at when I do get a new cable pc card.

Originally Posted by jj20x

Your point about the digitalbitrate site possibly being inaccurate because it is foreign is just plain silly, it has DVB / DAB scans from all over Europe, it has to be based somewhere. The scans are clearly made in Liverpool. I referred you to that site as the independent scans made by the SDR hobbyist confirmed the details on the site. Each transport stream was run through a TS Analyser and I have seen csv files detailing the content of each transport stream.

If most of the transport streams are encrypted, I accept some are not, how does he know what the contents of the streams actually contains, unless you are saying he has equipment which can crack VM's encyption system?

[RichardCoulter]

Originally Posted by jj20x

I also get the basic Worldbox app as part of TV XL.

Check out the apps section and the new Spanish Viva and Portuguese Coleta Worldbox apps, selecting these brings up a message stating: To see this you'll need to upgrade...

Ahhh right, didn't realise that they wanted extra money for these- think i'll pass :p

I assumed that niche channels like this would be free with XL in order to encourage those who want foreign language channels to upgrade or keep XL.

[vincerooney]

So is uncle Vince not likely to get Fox News? What a crying shame.

Never mind let's hope the new bloke in charge of tv acquisitions can provide me with some more tasty treats

Originally Posted by Horizon

I fully understand what you're talking about, I am just surprised that FTA channels exist on cable as I was told several years ago they would be axed. If they're still there, great. It will give me something to look at when I do get a new cable pc card.

If you look at the digitalbitrate site and click on "details" where you see an FTA channel, there is a screencap taken at the time of the scan. I think that should really be sufficient "proof".

If most of the transport streams are encrypted, I accept some are not, how does he know what the contents of the streams actually contains, unless you are saying he has equipment which can crack VM's encyption system?

The transport streams aren't encrypted, individual video / audio streams within them are. Things have moved on since the days of analogue, a transport stream can contain a mixture of encrypted and FTA services.

The individual streams still conform to the DVB standard, e.g. an encrypted video stream will still show up as, say, an MPEG2 Video stream and would be identified as such in the Program Map Table for that service. Basically, each video stream on each transport stream can be identified to an existing service and there were no additional, unidentified video streams. A Transport Stream Analyser does all of that automatically. Encryption doesn't "hide" the video streams within the transport stream, it just means there are additional ECM/EMM streams present to deal handle encryption and decryption in the set top box. The presence of the streams can be validated, that doesn't mean that the actual video/audio content of the streams can be decrypted and viewed (by the TS Analyser), that's simply not necessary.

Basically, encrypted channels carry extra streams to unscramble the contents of the video/audio streams in conjunction with the VM STB rather than hiding the streams. Again, the presence of these streams can be seen on the digitalbitrate site, which presumably uses some sort of TS analyser but uses a fixed template to display the results. Just click on "details" for an encrypted channel listed on that site, it will show the presence of the ECM streams and the type of encryption used.

The information on that site is accurate, although becoming out of date as the TS scanner appears to have been turned off recently.

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by vincerooney

So is uncle Vince not likely to get Fox News? What a crying shame.

Never mind let's hope the new bloke in charge of tv acquisitions can provide me with some more tasty treats

I agree with others on Fox News; no smoke without fire. I can't see much launching in the summer besides Sky Sports Mix and the extra BBC Olympic channels. But hopefully the Autmn will usher in some treats.

Originally Posted by vincerooney

So is uncle Vince not likely to get Fox News? What a crying shame.

Never mind let's hope the new bloke in charge of tv acquisitions can provide me with some more tasty treats

It's not there yet but presumably they added the service label for a reason. Unless someone at VM is just trolling users of this forum.

The head of tv acquisitions has apparently been reading old posts on the coming soon thread and has been busy acquiring foreign language content to entertain viewers during drunken evenings in their boxrooms.

Unfortunately he seems to want more cash for the privilege of viewing this content.

[denphone]

Originally Posted by 1andrew1

I agree with others on Fox News; no smoke without fire. I can't see much launching in the summer besides Sky Sports Mix and the extra BBC Olympic channels. But hopefully the Autmn will usher in some treats.

Oh what wonderful positivity old boy...

[theone2k10]

Originally Posted by vincerooney

So is uncle Vince not likely to get Fox News? What a crying shame.

Never mind let's hope the new bloke in charge of tv acquisitions can provide me with some more tasty treats

Fox news is coming we think by end of August.

[denphone]

Well we shall see....

[Media Boy UK]

Originally Posted by RichardCoulter

Is the Fox News that is broadcasting off the EPG the SD or HD version?

We seen photos of Fox News SD Channel.

[OLD BOY]

Originally Posted by passingbat

Personally I see nothing wrong with these posts. They are people passing on rumors of possible channels that may appear. What is wrong with that? They are not stated as a fact.

If they irritate you so much, as appears to be the case, why not just skip these posts and move on to the next one?

Erm, when exactly was I irritated? I was simply questioning the significance of 'testing channels'.

Why so sensitive?

Originally Posted by Media Boy

We seen photos of Fox News SD Channel.

What did the photo show exactly? A screenshot of actual video content or was it just EPG details? What Virgin Media region was the photo taken in?

[OLD BOY]

Originally Posted by jj20x

LOL, "there's no smoke without fire". If a new channel name shows up it's always going to be an indication that it could be "coming soon".

The purpose of checking the actual transport streams was to reconcile the difference between claims on here of channels testing and the absence of these channels on the digitalbitrate transport stream scans. The conclusion was that the channel description and EPG data has been added to the SI tables but the services aren't present on the transport streams. "Testing" tends to suggest that the video and audio streams are up and running, waiting to be added to the EPG, that's not the case for all of the channels. The BBC Olympic channels are, largely, up and running and ready to be added to the EPG. The other "tests".. not at such an advanced stage.

It does make me wonder why VM use actual channel names at such an early stage, it would be better, for them, to use a vague service name until the service is ready to be added to the EPG.

Sorry, I could have sworn that you said earlier that VM were testing frequencies rather than actual channels.

Did I misunderstand that?

Originally Posted by OLD BOY

Sorry, I could have sworn that you said earlier that VM were testing frequencies rather than actual channels.

Did I misunderstand that?

*sigh*

Misunderstood completely as the frequency tests are actually channels although not "new to virgin" just duplicates of VMs internal preview channels. I've also said that the BBC Olympic channels are running in the background.

Fox News, Arabic Hafla and the additional NDTV channels have been added to Service Description Tables. A quick explanation, the SDT lists service names, the type of service (TV or Audio basically) and it also lists the transport stream that the services are carried on and the service IDs. (A blind scan on a tv with a cable tuner would read these tables and add placeholders for the channels in case they ever appear).

On checking the transport stream IDs referred to in the SDT, the service IDs for Fox News, Arabic Hafla and the additional NDTV channels don't exist. It really depends on what you call a test. If you feel that the presence of a channel name on internal SI tables qualifies as a test, then feel free to consider this a test. If you feel that a test would involve carrying actual video and audio streams across the national network, these aren't tests.

I really wonder if you actually read my comment before submitting that reply. If you consider these to be tests, then testing a tv channel without video and audio wouldn't be a very advanced stage of testing.

It's a bit like being handed a treasure map, making your way to a remote island and finding an empty hole someone had started digging. You have a map but the treasure isn't there yet!