General : Coming Soon to Virgin TV (2018)

[Media Boy UK]

Late last night when watching WWE Smackdown Live we found that the total channels has gone up by one.

Later we noted that the unknown channel was added to the Virgin UK EPG for up to five mins before being remove again.

As far as we know this unknown was broadcasting on an higher number then channel 318.

---------- Post added at 15:33 ---------- Previous post was at 15:21 ----------

Radio Times: Two more Sky Cinema rebrands Coming next week.

Radio Times has reveal that from Saturday:

-Sky Cinema Action will be known as Sky Cinema Action Men on Virgin UK Channel 407 until (No end date given).

-Sky Cinema SciFi and Horror will be known as Sky Cinema Sky-Fi until October 1st (Working date*)

*Working date mean Radio Times says Sky-Fi will be with us for "September".

[Mad Max]

Late last night when watching WWE Smackdown Live we found that the total channels has gone up by one.

Who do you watch TV with MB, the missus?

[RobboEdin]

Surely the royal we.

[jfman]

They’ve moved some static channels - like Netflix and YouTube onto the BT Sport 4K frequency. They’ve also cleared one frequency of any broadcasts.

[Mad Max]

Originally Posted by jfman

They’ve moved some static channels - like Netflix and YouTube onto the BT Sport 4K frequency. They’ve also cleared one frequency of any broadcasts.

So what does all this actually mean to the layman?

[RobboEdin]

Making way for another UHD channel?

[jfman]

Well a single free frequency could hold 6 HD channels, or get reallocated to broadband! So at this stage it’s too early to say what they will do with it.

It’s more efficient, but not the only way, to broadcast an entire frequency with one type of channel.

A single frequency free would allow them to temporarily duplicate channels if they were intending to create more capacity on 64 QAM frequencies by switching to 256 QAM.

[Mad Max]

Ok, thanks for the explanation...…..

[jfman]

jj20x is over on DS giving it the usual playground line “I know something you don’t know”.

However it has been revealed Virgin are testing 7 HD channels per frequency and have been doing so for over a week.

http://www.digitalbitrate.com/dtv.ph...ng=en&mux=C002

[Raider999]

Originally Posted by jfman

jj20x is over on DS giving it the usual playground line “I know something you don’t know”.

However it has been revealed Virgin are testing 7 HD channels per frequency and have been doing so for over a week.

http://www.digitalbitrate.com/dtv.ph...ng=en&mux=C002

Does this mean further compression?

[jfman]

Yes, it’s already been implemented for that frequency (the top of the light blue line that was relatively flat is now variable and lower, indicating space being created).

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Interestingly, our friends in Germany compress 8 HD channels in some cases:

http://www.digitalbitrate.com/dtv.ph...ve=207&lang=en

They also put paid to the myth you can’t mix HD and SD channels, with 3xHD/5xSD mixed in some cases.

[epsilon]

Originally Posted by Raider999

Does this mean further compression?

No doubt. The same method freeview used to keep adding channels with freeview's severely limited capacity. The majority of viewers won't even notice, they happily watch heavily compressed blurry vision on freeview. Sadly, compression artefacts will become more obvious to the more discerning viewer.

[jfman]

Does anyone know if the hardware used by Virgin is significantly more advanced than Sky/the majority of channels on the Astra 2 platform? Like for like Virgin seem to have lower bitrates in most cases and my personal experience isn’t that I find the quality lower. Although some third parties used fixes bitrate on satellite.

Is the kit used in 2017 for MPEG4 much more efficient than 5/10 years ago?

[dodgem22]

I wonder if it is because the virgin stb upscales the picture better than the sky boxes.

[vincerooney]

7 HD channels eh? I wonder what these could be. I assume one will be Gold?