NTL MMDS Digital - Shoud I take the plunge?

thrillseeker

Anyone out there using NTL Digital on MMDS?
I had the analogue service and it was pretty dreadful.
So I switched to Sky Digital.

What's the picture quality like?
Does it have anamorphic widescreen on BBC/UTV as Sky Digital?
What's the decoder/remote like?

Any views would be welcome.

gerryo

Just got it recently, as the analogue service is being discontinued.

So far, not really pleased.

1. The boxes seem to be less reliable that the old analogue decoders, I've had to switch one off twice to get back missing channels.

2. Software updates, had one of these, leaves a dialog box on the screen,
messes up any late night recordings you try to make.

3. Picture wise, although it is clearer & noise free (compared to analogue), there is
less detail, & fast movement sometimes causes blocky-pixelation & sparkles.

4. Sound appears to be mono, flat, boring, no Nicam at all.

5. Some extra channels compared to analogue, but nothing exciting.

6. Slow to change channels, you have to go easy with the +/- button or else you
will overshoot.

Overall, barely worth the €19.55/month, considering RTE1/NRT2/TV£ & TG4 are free in Ireland & with a FTA satellite, you get BBC1/BB2 & others.

I'll be re-considering my position later in the year, but right now, only the lack of UTV+CH4 prevents it being dumped in favour of a satellite setup.

PK - the king

NTL MMDS DIGITAL:

1. Picture suffers a lot of grainieness and pixelation, due to massive over compression and low bitrates, because of the lack of bandwidth. Quite prone to flickering, freezing and jerking. It all depends really on how high up your aerial will be placed, if there is a line of sight of the transmitter, and how well your installation is done.

2. No. BBC and UTV are transmitted in there full glory - 16:9 widescreen (as they should be viewed!!!)

3. Decoder is a silver Pace 500 piece of crap. You can see the decoder and read the tech spec on http://www.pace.co.uk/products/broadcaster.asp?BID=ntl%3AIreland.
The box has a PSTN modem and a telephone connection is not necessary. The remote is viewable on the ntl website http://www.ntl.com/locales/ie/en/athome/dtv/mmds/epg.html (the picture is a little small though).

Hope this helps!!!

thrillseeker

Thanks for the info gerryo & pk - much appreciated.

Can I ask a couple more?

1. Re Widescreen broadcasts - are they 16:9 anamorphic or 4:3 with black bars top & bottom?

2. Is there an RF output to allow RTE etc to viewed elsewhere?

Cheers.

watty

It is a Digital tuner head and MPEG2 decoder with a Conditional Access Module for the deccrypting the encryption using viewing card. If it did have an RF out, only the single channel selected on the box is available.

It is just like Digital Cable or Digital Satellite, except poorer quality MPEG encoding.

PK - the king

1. No, they are full widescreen broadcasts, so you will get the optimum picture quality. If a widescreen broadcast is selected, eg. BBC, Sky, etc. and you have a widescreen tv that supports widescreen switching, your decoder will automatically tell the tv when a programme is broadcast in widescreen, by sending 6v, instead of 12v down pin 8 (note: widescreen ONLY works properly with scart). The widescreen picture will be cropped or displayed with black bars, only if you select 4:3 P&S, or 4:3 letterbox. You will not get a "narrow view" picture on any channels (unless the channel, such as a music channel, broadcasts that way) and you will not have any black bars.

2. Unfortunately, the boxes are low budget ones that ntl use for mmds. They have neither an RF output or bypass. The connections on the rear are: ONE Scart lead, ONE PSTN modem telephone connection, ONE cable input, ONE "smart"card reader and the power supply. Only one TV can be conneted normally so INSIST that you get a device known as a "Scart splitter" from the installer. You can connect one scart to your tv, and one to your vcr. You simply use the VCR's modulator to beam channels around the house (unless when you're watching a video). Simply set the tv to the VCR channel, and select your VCR to AV1/AV2 (depends on no. of scarts, make and model of video and your setup). If you want to watch RTE, you will need to use a separate VHF aerial (get an indoor one from Argos, or a slightly better outdoor one from peats - www.peats.ie).

Hope this helps!

thrillseeker

Thanks guys.
I think I'll pass..