Free to Air and chorus

102091101

Is there anyway to get free to air channels on chorus in the same way you can manually tune in channels on the sky settopbox?

Mossy Monk

no

Chorus is a locked system. you can only watch what Chorus themselves provide

dr.bollocko

Sky has, and I dont want to get too technical here, a digital dish yoke poking out the top of your house. It looks sort of like a fried egg only black. Pointing said black fried egg in the sky and putting numbers on your remote control will result in the magical tv fairies running to the fried egg and from there into your telly box. This works for free to air channels because the free to air channels are provided to digital satellite receivers.
Chorus has a sort of small black underground tv snake that has to keep biting your tv for it to receive the picture fairies. Chorus customers dont have the black fried egg on top of their house that attracts the free tv fairies such as those working for film four. ie. No digital satellite receiver means no digital satellite free to air channels. But u could buy a free view box if u wanna dance with the free tv fairies.

Irishdudedave

dr.bollocko wrote:

Chorus has a sort of small black underground tv snake .

Whats Underground about chorus cables? Any ones i've seen in Cork are are just hanging along the roofs of houses!

byte

And not forgetting MMDS from Chorus or NTL.

Anyway, Mossy answered the query.

seamus21514

dr.bollocko wrote:

Sky has, and I dont want to get too technical here, a digital dish yoke poking out the top of your house. It looks sort of like a fried egg only black. Pointing said black fried egg in the sky and putting numbers on your remote control will result in the magical tv fairies running to the fried egg and from there into your telly box. This works for free to air channels because the free to air channels are provided to digital satellite receivers.
Chorus has a sort of small black underground tv snake that has to keep biting your tv for it to receive the picture fairies. Chorus customers dont have the black fried egg on top of their house that attracts the free tv fairies such as those working for film four. ie. No digital satellite receiver means no digital satellite free to air channels. But u could buy a free view box if u wanna dance with the free tv fairies.

ROFL!

watty

Also unlike Satellite there are NO free channels as you must have the operator supplied box and a subscription to get anything.

(Note: If you watch MMDS/Cable they forgot to disconnect or left behind by a previous occupant you can be charged for the service)

legalimmigrant

Mossy Monk wrote:

no

Chorus is a locked system. you can only watch what Chorus themselves provide

In fact, in Cork, RTE1+2, TV3, TG4 and Chorus Sports are sent down the wire unencrypted (if you have a wire, that is - this doesn't apply to MMDS) and can be tuned to regular TV channels -- assuming your TV can tune to VHF. Occasionally they forget to encrypt other analogue channels, which is how we had Sky Movies 2 for free for several months this year.

When we finally actually became customers, the digibox didn't get installed with the necessary passthrough cable (it has an RF OUT which can be plugged into the TV or VCR). Three quid at Maplins bought me a SAT->RF plug converter to fix that.

It has limited value, obviously. We never use our regular TV remote at all, but I imagine that might be different if we owned a VCR.

But on the other hand, the radio selection on the wire in FM is *far* larger than the handful they send on the digibox.

zilog_jones

I think they were only talking about digital cable. And for the record, there's currently 20 unencrypted analogue cable channels in Limerick!

Antenna

legalimmigrant wrote:

In fact, in Cork, RTE1+2, TV3, TG4 and Chorus Sports are sent down the wire unencrypted

They threatened to scramble them some years ago - with newspaper ads in the Evening Echo saying that TV3 and Tg4 (or was it TnaG at the time?) were going to be scrambled shortly, and that eventually RTE1 and NET2 would be scrambled as well.

never happened, it would have led to a lot of shiny new aluminium on the roofs of Cork if it did as people would have had to get aerials installed for TVs without descramblers!!

rogue-entity

Well ex-NTL Waterford doesnt encrypt any of their analogue service, so its free multiroom for us. As for their digital service, not all their channels are encrypted. Just checking this morning:
RTE 2
TV3
CH6
City Channel
Setanta Sports
Euronews (and the foreign language varients)
And all the radio stations are currantly FTA.

If ex-NTL waterford drop the analogue service (and they will eventually) they will have to provide free decoders for everyone with analogue, and they will royally piss off everyone with "free multiroom" unless they unscramble the basic analogue channels so people can use their own gear. Its like the situation with Chorus, you will see a lot of TV ariels popping up around Waterford for people with more then one TV.

watty

No free multiroom on NTL Digital MMDS.

UPC can do what they like. They will balance costs and revenue.

Note that ANY clear channels is bad for the cable company as it encourages people to cut into the cable trunk.

They will balance cost of cable repairs and piracy versus basic analog service.

rogue-entity

watty wrote:

No free multiroom on NTL Digital MMDS.

UPC can do what they like. They will balance costs and revenue.

Note that ANY clear channels is bad for the cable company as it encourages people to cut into the cable trunk.

They will balance cost of cable repairs and piracy versus basic analog service.

1. Perhaps not, but then there was no free multiroom on analogue MMDS either, MMDS required cable-co hardware to receive the channels. We just split and distribute the output of the NTL TV point, we dont need decoders to watch the analogue channels thankfully.

2. True, but if they piss off their customers, their customers will jump ship.
UPC will have to at the very least give every analogue subscriber a digital box for each TV point they have (and pay for). People with free multiroom with many TVs will not be happy if they lose this.

3. ex-NTL have been providing clear analogue for years, save the sports and movie channel which were CryptoVision scrambled like chorus, easilly decoded with a computer though. I suspect they will fully scramble EVERY channel once analogue is gone to discourage people stealing cable by as you said, cutting into the trunk. But, thankfully, we are not restricted to NTL's crappy decoders, NagraVision has legit CAMs available, so decoding on a non-NTL box with an NTL card isnt so difficult in theory.

Mossy Monk

rogue-entity wrote:

2. True, but if they piss off their customers, their customers will jump ship

to who? Sky? multiroom isnt free with them either so the customer is stuck between a rock or a hard place. unless of course DTT is of any interest by then of course

rogue-entity

Mossy Monk wrote:

to who? Sky? multiroom isnt free with them either so the customer is stuck between a rock or a hard place. unless of course DTT is of any interest by then of course

*hands back shovel*
Well, there are probably a good many people with NTL basic, who then got Sky for the digital channels, but had NTL for RTE and the british channels (before they went FTA). My cousins are a good example of this. These people will probably just drop NTL (if they havent already) as all the british and irish channels (less C4 and C5) are on Sky anyway.

corkamadan

legalimmigrant wrote:

In fact, in Cork, RTE1+2, TV3, TG4 and Chorus Sports are sent down the wire unencrypted (if you have a wire, that is - this doesn't apply to MMDS) and can be tuned to regular TV channels -- assuming your TV can tune to VHF. Occasionally they forget to encrypt other analogue channels, which is how we had Sky Movies 2 for free for several months this year.

When we finally actually became customers, the digibox didn't get installed with the necessary passthrough cable (it has an RF OUT which can be plugged into the TV or VCR). Three quid at Maplins bought me a SAT->RF plug converter to fix that.

It has limited value, obviously. We never use our regular TV remote at all, but I imagine that might be different if we owned a VCR.

But on the other hand, the radio selection on the wire in FM is *far* larger than the handful they send on the digibox.

Does this mean that if my house has cable (chorus) coming in I can just join to my internal house cable and tune the tv for RTE+tv3.
I was planning on putting up a roof aerial for these channels and using the sky dish for the free digital channels.
I only just discovered my house has chorus cable coming as far as a junction box in my hall, but the cables are not connected at this junction.
Do I need some special coax connector for the chorus cable?

Mossy Monk

contact Chorus. i am sure they will connect up their cable for you

watty

corkamadan wrote:

Does this mean that if my house has cable (chorus) coming in I can just join to my internal house cable and tune the tv for RTE+tv3.<br>
I was planning on putting up a roof aerial for these channels and using the sky dish for the free digital channels.<br>
I only just discovered my house has chorus cable coming as far as a junction box in my hall, but the cables are not connected at this junction.<br>
Do I need some special coax connector for the chorus cable?

Connection by other than Chorus, without a subscription is theft in Ireland with large penalties.

Your plan of a TV aerial and Free To Air Satellite will give far far higher quality.


There are NO free cable channels even if unencrypted. You MUST pay for ANY connection.

watty

legalimmigrant wrote:

But on the other hand, the radio selection on the wire in FM is *far* larger than the handful they send on the digibox.

?????
Nonsense.

Sky 28.E alone has 70 Radio stations. About 15 BBC Radio, Only local radio and Today FM easily picked up on a Radio with a coathanger is missing. Nobody's analogue radio on Cable TV in Ireland has anything like as much as Satellite. Even RTE /RnaG and Lyric Radio are all free on Satellite.

With fixed dish and 28, !9, 13E and a 70 Euro FTA satellite receiver you get at least 500 decent radio stations out of over 850 found.

Admittedly on Sky's wierd Irish subscription all the BBC except BBC World are missing from EPG, but they work on "Other channels" There is no real EPG program info on Sky's Radio listings.

darkmaster2

watty wrote:

?????
Nonsense.

Sky 28.E alone has 70 Radio stations.

I think he was referring to the digtal radio selection on Chorus digital boxes.
There are only a few stations on there

1. BBC Radio 1
2. BBC Radio 2
3. BBC Radio 3
4. BBC Radio 4
5. BBC World Service
6. Classic FM

No rte as far as I know. On the other hand, the FM through the cable network has a nice few services.

watty

Ah the GENERIC "digibox".

Chorus Digital is limited and Chorus Digital MMDS is even more so. Well when UPC's upgrade is done the MMDS will be digital with 120 and no analog or else scrapped and the cable the same as NTL with phone and broadband options.