Sky with a Magnet phone line

Daavid

Hi,
Does anyone have a sky+ or multiroom setup with a Magnet landline?
Reason I ask is that I'm planning to move to an apartment where Magnet is set up, but the landlines are all digital by the looks of things and I'm not sure if sky will allow the use of them. Coz I thnk they might be VoIP or something.

Anyone know?

Cheers,
Dave

watty

If they work with a fax, they should work with Sky box. Really only a Mirror Sub absolutely needs a phone line working.

Daavid

The phone port is actually a PC network port, thats why I'm unsure.
I know mostly only mirror subs need a line, but I'll probably be upgrading to HD when it comes out and I'm suspecting that they'll enforce the rules on this a bit when its released, like they did with Sky+.

billius

Ah Sky Schmy...NTL digital is ten times better!! NTL (and Zeppelin) rules!!!:D

Mossy Monk

was the phone line always necessary with Sky+?
besides they have an opt out of the phone line now, costs a bit extra but it is there

Mossy Monk

billius wrote:

Ah Sky Schmy...NTL digital is ten times better!! NTL (and Zeppelin) rules!!!:D

oh wow, an ntl fanboy. why not go back into your box unless you have something to say that is related to this thread

BrianD

The Magnet offering is a Sky-By-Wire broadband product. I got a brochure on it (in the green bin) and seems to be only the Sky branded sports and movie channels.

They did seem to offer a multiroom offering but afaik it's a completely different offering to the Sky Digital (DSAT) offering.

bk

Magnet use VoIP for their phone service, so this will not work with fax machines or Sky Digital boxes.

Therefore you can get a single Sky Digital Box (with an extra €100 charge for no phone line). but you can't get a mirror sub (Second box).

Of course there is nothing stopping you from using a FTA box for other rooms.

Magnets TV service is completely different. It is delivered via IPTV technology over DSL (phone line). The line up of channels is much smaller then Sky or NTL and from reports, the picture and sound quality is inferior to both Sky and NTL, it has a lot of pixelation, the EPG is awful and doesn't work most of the time, the TV service uses the bandwidth of the internet service (therefore reducing quality of BB) and you can forget about getting multi room as it doesn't scale.

Daavid

Thanks BK, exactly the info I was looking for.

Does anyone know if there is any end in sight for this silly phnoe rule of Skys? I mean more and more people are going VoIP or just using maobiles rather than have a land-line. It seems like such an antiquated rule.

By the way MossyMonk, yeah a phone line was always needed with Sky+. I rang before about getting it installed (about 3 months ago) and was told even then that if I didn't have a landline, I wasn't getting it. I think the opt out is only, strictly speaking, for the regular digital.

Mossy Monk

Daavid wrote:

I think the opt out is only, strictly speaking, for the regular digital.

thats a shame, it works perfectly without having to pay eircom

watty

For a Mirror sub it is the only reliable way of checking that you didn't sell it off to a friend across town.

bk

Honestly Sky is going to have to do something about this. They are artifically limiting their market size.

In the last 12 months Eircoms has lost about 10% of phone lines, mostly to people with mobiles. Recently I was looking for a new house mate, a lot of people who called were amazed that we had a phone line and complained that they didn't want to pay there share of the rent on it as they already had a mobile (whoa, whoa, etc.).

Lack of phone lines is particularly true for young affluent people, exactly the target demographic for Sky. NTL have potentially the same problem with it's digital service, yet they don't put this restriction on their customers. They just recognise that it is part of the cost of doing business and that most people won't abuse it.

Daavid

Yeah, but seriously, thats simply not good enough... or at least it won't be good enough pretty soon. I only got rid of my phone line a while ago. I'm not about to get another one in so I can watch telly. it flippin mad. I know what you're saying Watty, but they really are gonna have to come up with something better because regular land lines are not going to hang around just so people can get sky.
Why can't they have mirror sub boxes connected and if the connection is broke neither operate? Something like that would mean no one needs to be paying Eircom just to have sky multi room in.

watty

NTL Digital boxes can talk to home in theory without a phone line. Sky boxes can't. A Sky Digibox to box connection is easily arranged over the Broadband so that won't work. Sky only have two options:
1) Phone call
2) Reverse TX via satellite. Expensive HW.

A IP connection via broadband is no use except for Interactive. It may be that Sky HD boxes or newer Sky+ boxes will be able to do this, but no good for proving that two boxes are in the same house, so no use to validate Mirror Sub.

Of course a GSM and/or 3G single connection to both boxes would work but this too is too expensive.

So for multi sky without a working POTS connection you need two full subscriptions.

Also an NTL / Cable box can in theory be setup to work only on a specific cable segment. A Sky Digibox works any COUNTRY even as long as you have a signal.

There is another way... The Cinema Digital HD satellite recivers have an embedded GPS. Move it 25m and it doesn't receive any longer. With the new more accurate (< 1m) European GPS system in a few years maybe Sky will put a Gallieo GPS in every box. Then they don't need to have expense of FTV cards. RTE even could work without a card. (But not on a FTA receiver).

Daavid

Like I said though, phone lines aren't gonna hang around just for Sky no matter how much they might want them to. I know losing the odd customer here and there because of it isn't gonna bother them now, but times they are a changin'. Their target market for HD for instance is the same bracket that are moving away from landlines.

bk

NTL Digital boxes don't include DOCSIS so they currently have no way to "phone home" and NTL boxes aren't restricted to any particular cable segment. So with NTL you can basically take your box anywhere that digital works, they just ignore the whole problem, they have obviously decided that not many people will actually abuse it and that any abuse is cheaper then going for expensive work arounds like requiring a phone line, GPS, etc.

I honestly believe that NTL have made the right decision here and Sky has made the wrong decision. Phone line use is decreasing at a massive rate and will only continue to decrease as line rental cost goes up while mobile costs drop [1]. Sky are only hurting themselves, eventually the cost of lost customers will out weight the cost of people abusing the system (they could always limit the number of Sub's orderable per house).

If 10% of homes don't have a phone line, that is 10% of people who can't get Sky+ or multiroom, I can guarantee that by next year at least 20% of homes won't have a phone line.

Another possible solution for Sky would be to include WiFI modules in the Sky boxes. You could get the Sky boxes to talk to one another via WiFI to ensure that they are within 20 metres of one another etc. You could also do other interesting things with WiFi, such as:

1) Stream recorded shows from a Sky+ box to a standard box (or another Sky+ box).

2) If you have two Sky+ boxes, they could talk to one another to ensure that they don't record the same show twice.

3) Control all your Sky+ boxes from any Sky box in your house.

4) Connect to BB for interactive services, VoD, programme Sky+ via BB, etc.

5) Stream Radio, Music TV channels to Sky Gnome (which BTW already uses WiFi, so Sky already know how to do this).

Sorry, quick correction, Sky Gnome uses an FM transmitter, however it could use WiFi.
Hell, they could even go further and develop a Tablet PC type devices with WiFi to stream shows and Sky+ content around the house. Good for the kids and watching TV from bed.

And remember, a WiFi module is really cheap, my DS that cost €150 has one, so I think they could afford to put one in a Sky box.

See all it takes is some lateral thinking, think different.

[1] o2 have a great deal were for €35 per month you get 2000 offpeak minutes (about 33 hours) a month to landlines and o2 phones. This is a very tempting telephone line replacement option.

Kensington

bk wrote:

Magnet use VoIP for their phone service, so this will not work with fax machines or Sky Digital boxes.

AFAIK, Smart Telecom use VoIP for their phonelines aswell and this causes no apparent problems for the sky digibox to call home.

channelsurfer

the sky by wire with magnet is very expensive. website says 31.50 to 49.50 for just sky sports and sky movies. I passed by the fairgreen estate in laois (one of magnets enabled estates) and the majority of the houses had sky satellite so the take up is probably low and also why do they advertise not inclusive of line rental of 24 euro in their ads. Are they not indepedent of eircom or do they piggyback on eircom networks.

bk

Kensington wrote:

AFAIK, Smart Telecom use VoIP for their phonelines aswell and this causes no apparent problems for the sky digibox to call home.

Magnet seem to use VoIP right from your home using an ATA, which definitely isn't compatible with Sky.

Smart I think use a standard POTS network as far as their own network and then only go VoIP, so if you dial an ISP it splits off before going into Smarts VoIP network. However that is just an educated guess.

The thing is standard VoIP is simply not compatible with dial-up.

watty

bk wrote:

N
If 10% of homes don't have a phone line, that is 10% of people who can't get Sky+ or multiroom, I can guarantee that by next year at least 20% of homes won't have a phone line.

Another possible solution for Sky would be to include WiFI modules in the Sky boxes. You could get the Sky boxes to talk to one another via WiFI to ensure that they are within 20 metres of one another etc.

I think it is near 20% now.

No. The Wifi can be "pinched" and fed over internet. ANY box to box solution can be easily hacked so they won't do it. The UK really drives Sky thinking (20 times irish market). Also Italy. The phone line thing is a pecular problem to Ireland.

The more I think about it I think the only alternative for mirror to Phone is embedded GPS.

The Sky+ already no-one has problem with phone line. I can see them dropping that, but like ordinary box for an extra fee.

bk

watty wrote:

No. The Wifi can be "pinched" and fed over internet. ANY box to box solution can be easily hacked so they won't do it. The UK really drives Sky thinking (20 times irish market). Also Italy. The phone line thing is a pecular problem to Ireland.

Actually it is also a problem in the UK, even though line rental is much lower, many people are still moving to mobiles there also.

I've actually been thinking about the WiFi thing a lot today, it is a really good idea. If it was done right it would actually be extremely difficult to break, have them both connect via WPA with a very strong key. Use Public-Private Key Cyrpotography to download new keys to each box via satelitte on a regular bases and have the two boxes authenticate each other by exchanging these keys over the wireless. It would be almost impossible to break this with a man in the middle attack or using brute force.

Even if it could be broken it would require a very high degree of computer expertise, lots of time and good equipment, certainly not something that Sky why need to worry about on a mass scale.

watty

bk wrote:

Actually it is also a problem in the UK, even though line rental is much lower, many people are still moving to mobiles there also.

I've actually been thinking about the WiFi thing a lot today, it is a really good idea. If it was done right it would actually be extremely difficult to break, have them both connect via WPA with a very strong key. Use Public-Private Key Cyrpotography to download new keys to each box via satelitte on a regular bases and have the two boxes authenticate each other by exchanging these keys over the wireless. It would be almost impossible to break this with a man in the middle attack or using brute force.

Even if it could be broken it would require a very high degree of computer expertise, lots of time and good equipment, certainly not something that Sky why need to worry about on a mass scale.

The key does not need broken, that is why the system is easy to circumvent. just copy all the traffic on to a VPN over Internet and back again. Only one person needs to know how to do it and everyone can do it. You don't actually need to know what any of the traffic means.

Also none of the WiFi pre-licenced frequencies are reliable in a city anymore with so many WiFi and Video senders. Maybe 10% wount'd work

Daavid

Daavid wrote:

Like I said though, phone lines aren't gonna hang around just for Sky no matter how much they might want them to. I know losing the odd customer here and there because of it isn't gonna bother them now, but times they are a changin'. Their target market for HD for instance is the same bracket that are moving away from landlines.

This still stands.

bk

watty wrote:

The key does not need broken, that is why the system is easy to circumvent. just copy all the traffic on to a VPN over Internet and back again. Only one person needs to know how to do it and everyone can do it. You don't actually need to know what any of the traffic means.

No, this simply wouldn't work, you can't simply grab 802.11 traffic and shunt it over VPN. You would need to break the WPA security first and then you could shunt the TCP/IP traffic.

WPA with a strong key has never been broken, it is a good secure security system.

There are also options in the 802.11 and WPA specs to disallow bridging and repeating.

What you are saying is simply not do able.

The interference problems of WiFi can also be easily bypassed.

bk

Watty you still haven't answered why Sky is so paranoid about this and is hurting itself, while NTL doesn't bother to have any checks on it's Digital boxes.

I believe Sky will remove the landline requirement in te next 12 months, they simply have to. I honestly believe that even now, they are already losing more money due to people not being able to sign up to advnaced services then they would to people abusing the system. From a business perspective that is not a good idea.

Sanno

I'm infuriated by Sky's stance on this. I've tried several times to upgrade from normal sky digital to sky+ multiroom, but have been refused several times because although I have an eircom phone line, the access point is in the kitchen and I refuse to run extension lines from the kitchen across the house to the sitting room.

One solution that has been recommended is to use those adaptors that run the phone line over your homes internal electricity network. This way I could plug one adaptor into the kitchen and one into the sitting room, beside the new sky+ box. Has anybody had any experience of this? Does it really work? I don't mind investing in the hardware as long as it works.

watty

The wireless phone extensions are safer and more reliable. Some of them work with Digibox

Sanno

Do these work with a DSL line? Even on the analog side of the filter?

watty

ONLY on the analog side of the filter.

digiking

couldn't you just purchase a ATA (analogue telephone Adaptor) and plug sky box into that and plug that into magnet router.

Daavid

Is this possible?

BrianD

bk wrote:

Watty you still haven't answered why Sky is so paranoid about this and is hurting itself, while NTL doesn't bother to have any checks on it's Digital boxes.

Is the system not different? Plus you have to have cable at the second address.

bk wrote:

I believe Sky will remove the landline requirement in te next 12 months, they simply have to. I honestly believe that even now, they are already losing more money due to people not being able to sign up to advnaced services then they would to people abusing the system. From a business perspective that is not a good idea.

Sky viewed interactive services (is this what you mean by advanced?) as a revenue stream. There were targeting an extra £50 per sub over and over above whatever they are paying for television services. For this to work there needs to be a means of communicating back to Sky or the service provider. The phone line is the obvious solution and I doubt if they will move away from it.

daavid wrote:

Their target market for HD for instance is the same bracket that are moving away from landlines.

Would these people not be 'early adopters', are more likely to have broadband and therefore likely to have a phone line? Just a thought.

The fixed line requirement also applies to the UK where there is also a large trade of boxes going abroad.

bk

digiking wrote:

couldn't you just purchase a ATA (analogue telephone Adaptor) and plug sky box into that and plug that into magnet router.

No, I assume you are talking about the VoIP ATA. They take the analog voice input and turn it into IP Packets to be sent over the network. It is designed to work with sound only, it does not work with data services like modems, fax, sky etc.

bk

BrianD wrote:

Is the system not different? Plus you have to have cable at the second address.

While cable technology is obviously very different to sat, Digital cable can also be stolen in the same way that Sky could be stolen if they didn't have the phone line thing.

Yes you do need an analogue cable at both addresses, but you can still steal a lot of valuable TV.

I don't want to go into detail on it as I don't want to give anyone ideas. But you could easily steal about €100 worth of TV from NTL if you were really sneaky.

BrianD wrote:

Sky viewed interactive services (is this what you mean by advanced?) as a revenue stream. There were targeting an extra £50 per sub over and over above whatever they are paying for television services. For this to work there needs to be a means of communicating back to Sky or the service provider. The phone line is the obvious solution and I doubt if they will move away from it.

Sorry when I said "advanced" services I was thinking of mirror subs, Sky+ and HD, "advanced" was probably the wrong word to use.

The new HD Sky+ PVR's come with ethernet ports and Sky are expected to deliver interactive services via ethernet from various BB services in the near future. So perhaps Sky has already decided to scrap the phone line.

BrianD wrote:

Would these people not be 'early adopters', are more likely to have broadband and therefore likely to have a phone line? Just a thought.

Since they are "early adopters, they are equally likely to have cable BB, wireless BB or LLU DSL (with VoIP), non of which will work with Sky.

bk

Hey I just thought of two more ways two validate that the boxes are in the same premises.

1) Put ethernet in all Sky boxes. Physically link the boxes via ethernet. And have each Sky box transmit IP packets via SSL, if the IP packets go over more then one hop, then you know that it has gone out onto the internet and that they are therefore not in the same house.

2) Use a FM radio transmitter (not actually legal in Ireland) or a 2.4GHz transmitters (not necessarily WiFi) with a proprietary protocol and have them authenticate that way.

watty

digiking wrote:

couldn't you just purchase a ATA (analogue telephone Adaptor) and plug sky box into that and plug that into magnet router.

BK above is right.

Technical explianation
Conversion of Audio to Digital and back to Audio is called a Codec.

ISDN uses 64K codecs that distort slightly (uLaw or ALaw compression and decompresson built in). These will allow Fax and Data, possibly up to 33K or more.

ADPCM is about 32K and will still work with Fax/Data, but not so well
CVSD 16K will allow maybe 300 baud data or maybe even 2400 baud. It sounds rotten though.

These are all the audio equivalent of BMP, TIF, GIF and PNG images.

Fancy modern adaptive VOIP and also low bit rate MP2 or MP3 codecs rely on how thing sound to us, the audio equivalent of high compression JPEG or MPEG.

A data file can be encoded as BMP, GIF, PNG etc and at the other end will still make sense. A data file fed in MPEG is badly broken, this is why teletext on Satellite, Digital Cable or Digital Terrestrial is a separate stream and not in the picture.

FAx and Data modem use complex sounds to represent the data. The adaptive end user VOIP codecs (Skype, Magnet etc) may make the sound, sound similar to our ear, but for a modem it is useless. Other folks providing a higher quality of VOIP use codecs more like those on ISDN, so their services (NTL Digital cable phone perhaps) will work with Fax or Modem data

Blaster99

The landline thing is an Irish problem and apartments (where you typically can't have a dish) are probably overrepresented in the stats. A British company will not bother their arses with a special solution for 10% of the Irish market.

It should also be pointed out that some of Magnet's services are FTTH and they work well. There are people with the IPTV service that seem happy enough with it too, even though that's difficult to believe.

POTS is 64Kbps uncompressed, but the carriers use voice compression down to about 8Kbps from memory.

Daavid

There are more cable and wireless broadband suppliers popping up all over the place. Phone lines won't hang around for that either as there are already better alternatives.
I hope BK is right about the 12 month timeline, but if not I'd say 2 years and the phonelines restriction will be gone.

Blaster99

Just a wild guess, but somebody with a cable connection to their house is probably not that likely to sign up with Sky seeing as the cable providers like to bundle TV with broadband and telephony. WISP's are an Irish phenomenon, so it falls into the previous "British company couldn't be arsed" category.

Daavid

They TRY to bundle it. Everyone I know with Chorus BB doesn't use their TV serve and uses sky instead.

bk

Blaster99 wrote:

Just a wild guess, but somebody with a cable connection to their house is probably not that likely to sign up with Sky seeing as the cable providers like to bundle TV with broadband and telephony. WISP's are an Irish phenomenon, so it falls into the previous "British company couldn't be arsed" category.

Yes, but even in the UK, lots of people are dumping phone lines for just mobiles.

Blaster99

And if that becomes a problem for Sky, they will deal with it. Apartment dwellers in Ireland is probably not something they lose a lot of sleep over, though... If they insist on this phone thing, it wouldn't be difficult for them to do a deal with an MNO. Interestingly, eircom has a deal with Sky. Well, it's not much of a deal, but they point out that you get a free install with Sky etc. I suppose it's in eircom's interest to find as many uses for a landline as possible.

I think they should probably just get over the whole phone requirement for a basic install and do wireless or powerline networking for the pairing inside a house for a multi-viewing setup. Like was suggested above.

Satellite is a lot more open than cable and has a history of fraud, so I'd say this has led to a certain amount of paranoia in Sky.

linky

I have both sky and magnet. Magnet use Voip across there network but if you get an ATA in your house this converts Voip to Analog. I requested Sky to test my line to see if there was any problem with it . They came back with an all clear. One way to test it yourself is to try to purchase a movie on the premium channel. If it works then you should have no problems. Also it is possible to have a fax machine also working on magnet. All they have to do is to correct some settings on the ATA.

linky

Bad news Sky will not work with magnet VOIP phones. I have gone through all the ins and outs of this problem and have just gotten the final answere It will not work. It seems that the ATA will allow the Sky box to believe that you are connected to a phone line but when it tries to connect via its internal modem it will not work. I have had a Sky engineer out to my house to check this and he informed me that they are having problems with all the Voip phone services. If you want to have 2 boxes or to connect to Sky for the first time or to upgrade to either Sky + or Sky HDTV you will need a phone line the will allow modems to connect without problems. I have had to cancel my Magnet contract and return to Eircom because I am upgrading to Sky HDTV

watty

The VOIP codec is not good enough.

A usefull test is to try and send/receive a fax or connect to internet, BBS or private server via dialup modem.

If neither of those works. It won't work. If one of those works it only might work.

You can have Sky without Mirror sub and without phone for first time by paying €37.50 extra.

If you add Sky+ yourself later without mirror sub and upgrade sub may be possible without phone line.