594,000 with the same basic cable/mmds package from Cork to Donegal

a bientot

As Liberty Global-UPC IRELAND prepare to announce the new line up of channels to be provided in the very basic package at the cheapest price (possibly 20 named channels for 15 euros per month) what do you think they should (or will) provide apart from the 'bread and butter' (in)famous eight........?

This service will be provided to all customers in all cities and towns throughout Ireland where they operate including a few new ones where they are negotiating to buy at present.....e.g. systems in two towns in Co Kildare.

It is probable that all customers will be provided with decoders as has been done in a number of mainland countries.....thereby all going digital (as has happened for all former ntl MMDS customers)

And the crunch question.... how will the US management deal with towns/cities that have particular channels available to them in basic for over fifteen years and who will have to lose them for the sake of equality of service with the likes of Dublin?

Knowing that senior cable management as well as relevant government agencies do keep a close eye on boards.ie perhaps some of you can offer advice.......including arguments to justify retaining your particular favourites?

mike65

Well if the untouchable 8 are

RTE1 RTE2 TV3 TG4 BBC1 BBC2 ITV C4 then the others should be Sky One, Sky News, E4, BBC3, BBC4, Setanta 1, Nick, VH1, Paramount, Discovery.

A bit of everything

Mike.

a bientot

So you have graciously left two spaces for those who may not have English as their first language....for channels in Polish (think of the 180,000), French (for those from the Congo etc.)...........


and then you have a tiny bit of everything.

mike65

I knew you'd pick me up on TV5! and yes a Polish language station is pretty much required now I think.

Mike.

Freddie59

mike65 wrote:

I knew you'd pick me up on TV5! and yes a Polish language station is pretty much required now I think.

Mike.

Good choices Mike. In fairness, that TV5 yoke is available on digital anywaay for a fiver a month, so if ya really want it...........
You're right about Poilsh speakers. They'd probably outnumber French speakers here now by 10 or 20 to 1.:eek:

watty

Easily a dozen French and half a dozen roughly French and Polish free on Satellite though. I think only Polish not allowed to have dish will have cable. Limerick has a huge qty of polish Pay TV dishes now.

watty

Is the 594,000 correct? Is that people or households?

zilog_jones

mike65 wrote:

...then the others should be Sky One, Sky News, E4, BBC3, BBC4, Setanta 1, Nick, VH1, Paramount, Discovery.

Meh, E4's kinda a waste of space IMO (there's only so many repeats of Friends you can watch without your brain imploding), and BBC3 looks like another repeat-o-rama channel - but they're probably cheap enough to get. Paramount's really gone downhill in the past year or so - they just don't have enough good programs to make up 2 channels, but there's still *some* good shows on it.

I'd say Sky One, Sky News, some half-decent music channel (got nothing now -_-), Eurosport, Discovery (possibly Real Time too), Paramount, Nickelodeon, FilmFour maybe (I'd assume it'd be pretty cheap to get too), Channel 6, maybe MTV, and maybe some other kid's channel (CN or Jetix or some bollox).

It might be pretty tough trying to get licenses for Polish channels (dunno really), but I'm sure there'd be interest in them, especially if they're not just FTA satellite channels.

bk

I'd say that the NTL Dublin analogue line up will likely be used in all places for three reasons:

1) It is the most widely watched at the moment.
2) They have already changed the NTL Galway and Waterford networks to match it.
3) They have been very actively updating and changing it over the last few months (with Living TV and C6), yet they haven't been doing any work with the Chorus line ups, this would indicate to me that the NTL will be the one.

So that would be:
RTE 1, 2, TV3, TG4, C6, BBC 1, 2, UTV, C4, E4, Sky One, Sky News, Paramount, Living TV, Discovery, Nick, MTV, Setanta.

I most say it is actually quiet a good line up, it pretty much represents all the best and highest rated cable channels.

The only ones that I think they might add, are Eurosport and Film Four. But then on the other hand they might want to hold those back in order to make the digital packages more attractive.

I bet anyone €100 that they won't add any foreign language channels. However I agree that there should be more foreign language channels on the digital service.

I don't believe they will go all digital and dump the analogue service in NTL cable areas, analogue is just too popular and it would likely cause a massive uproar and mass exodus to Sky.

However I do think they will drop the analogue service in Chorus areas that already use the crappy scrambler "black" boxes as those customers are lready well use to using a box and aren't use to having free extra points like people in Dublin and the digital would be a vast imporvement over the "black boxes".

On the other hand if the UPC management were really brave they might decide to introduce the analogue service unscrambled in Chorus areas like it currently is in NTL areas as a way to stop the fluid of customers leaving Chorus for Sky. However it is unlikely.

bk

watty wrote:

Is the 594,000 correct? Is that people or households?

According to their last financil report as of June 30th they have:

Home Passed: 850,100
Two Way Homes Passed: 259,300
Customer Relationships: 591,500 (This counts each home only once, even if you get multiple services, like digital, bb,etc.)
Revenue Generating Units: 630,200 (This counts TV and BB as one each, but not multi-room).
Analog Cable: 296,300 (Doesn't include people who are subscribed to Digital and therefore also analogue by default).
Digital Cable: 177,900 (Doesn't include multi-room, only one per home counted and also includes lots of people who also get the analogue service not counted above).
MMDS: 115,400
Internet Homes Serviceable: 259,300
Internet Homes Subscribers: 40,300

watty

So interms of actual Digital subscribers maybe 1/2 the number on Satellite. I guess mostly limited by the areas that can actually supply digital

bk

watty wrote:

So interms of actual Digital subscribers maybe 1/2 the number on Satellite. I guess mostly limited by the areas that can actually supply digital

Yes, but total number of TV customers is far higher.

I expect if UPC convert all their Chorus Analogue scrambled customers to at least a 20 channel digital service then they will equal Sky.

The NTL analogue customers will be harder to move, because many people are simply happy to stay analogue as it is a pretty good basic service.

a bientot

Any attempt to impose a 'Dublin basic' on other towns in Ireland already availing of a semi typical UPC basic mainland Europe package in analogue will cause hassle with subscribers.......in places such as Swords, Malahide, Maynooth, Newbridge, Athlone, Cork etc.........................

This company Liberty Global is well used to dealing with multi-lingual subscribers who see nothing weird or odd in having a service designed to cater for and appease all.......

It is a fact of life in this country in 2006 that there are people here, not to forget to mention other EU citizens and the non-nationals, who do not have English and will never have the Queen's and other people's means of communication as their first language.......
There are thousands of visitors staying in Irish hotels availing of the basic UPC service and some do voice their surprise in tourism questionnaires at seeing all channels in the one language................

This is 2006 ..................surely we don't need to watch repeats of the same programmes on several different channels in order to enjoy ourselves?
Has anyone heard of home recording machines?

icdg

You can probably be sure that switching off the Dublin analogue service now would mean a PR disaster for UPC, and not a good way to introduce their brand for Ireland. Basically it makes all VCRs and second (and third, and yes fourth in some households) connected to cable useless, unless you get a box for each TV. I would at least wait until (if and when) DTT is fully up and running, that way there would at least be the consolation that these TVs/VCRs could keep multichannel TV through DTT.

As far as line-up is concerned. Of course RTÉ One, RTÉ Two, TV3, and TG4 are must carries (on cable, TV3 only on MMDS), and BBC One, BBC Two, UTV, and Channel 4 are neccessaries. Sky One and Sky News are also next-to-near necessary (yes I know several of the IPTV providers don't have them, but they don't have the near-ubiquity NTL has in Dublin).

Beyond that, all channels are up for discussion (however expect many kids and teenagers to complain if they try to touch Nickelodeon...) . Last time I checked (and maybe they have improved things in the meantime) a couple of the ex-CMI systems were still in very bad streights as far as channel capacity was conecerned and even 15 channels could be pushing it...

bk

icdg wrote:

You can probably be sure that switching off the Dublin analogue service now would mean a PR disaster for UPC, and not a good way to introduce their brand for Ireland.

Well they are currently making a PR disaster with what they are doing with the BB service at the moment. The service has deteriorated, all routing is going through Amsterdam!! and they are kicking off people who break the cap, very bad start.
But I'd say you are right, analogue is just too important in ex NTL areas.

a bientot, yawn, not going to happen, no one cares. Not going to be any foreign language channels on analogue service (I'm willing to bet you €100 on this) and rightly so.

I'd have no problem with foreign language channels on Digital, but they are a complete waste of resources on analogue.

watty

bk wrote:

Yes, but total number of TV customers is far higher.

I expect if UPC convert all their Chorus Analogue scrambled customers to at least a 20 channel digital service then they will equal Sky.

The NTL analogue customers will be harder to move, because many people are simply happy to stay analogue as it is a pretty good basic service.

Once you change to a small bunch of analog then 120+ digital channels is easy. 6 to 12 digital channels fit in space of one analog channel, depending on quality.

bk

watty wrote:

Once you change to a small bunch of analog then 120+ digital channels is easy. 6 to 12 digital channels fit in space of one analog channel, depending on quality.

Yes, I know, what I meant by 20 channels, is that I think they will drop in a complete replacement of the 20 channel scrambled analogue service with a 20 channel digital service at no extra cost over analogue (basically treating digital like a basic analogue service).

Of course they will also be able to offer the full digital service over this also.

As you say with analogue gone, they should be able to increase their 60 channel full digital lineup to the 120 channel lineup available in NTL areas.

Mountjoy Mugger

Just thinking aloud here:

Would the 259300 Internet Serviceable homes be capable of carrying a HD signal, should UPC ever decide to go that route?

bk

Mountjoy Mugger wrote:

Just thinking aloud here:

Would the 259300 Internet Serviceable homes be capable of carrying a HD signal, should UPC ever decide to go that route?

HD in cable is rarely carried via BB. Instead it is carried in much the same way as standard definition digital TV, but using a different codec and more bandwidth.

There is nothing stopping UPC offering HD right now other then sufficient bandwidth to carry the additional channels and cheap enough set top boxes.

Single analogue channel uses 8MHz of radio frequency or 51Mb/s of bandwidth.
About 6 - 12 standard definition (about 5Mb/s each) digital channels fit in the space of a sinle analogue channel.
About 5 - 6 HD (about 10Mbit/s each) channels fit in the space of a single analogue channel.

SPDUB

icdg wrote:

You can probably be sure that switching off the Dublin analogue service now would mean a PR disaster for UPC, and not a good way to introduce their brand for Ireland.

There is no digital service in my part of Dublin 12 just the analogue and it's a long time since I've seen them doing any work in the area

watty

bk wrote:

HD in cable is rarely carried via BB. Instead it is carried in much the same way as standard definition digital TV, but using a different codec and more bandwidth.

There is nothing stopping UPC offering HD right now other then sufficient bandwidth to carry the additional channels and cheap enough set top boxes.

They would need new gear at head end and EXPENSIVE set boxes for HD.

Cable always lags satellite in provision of features because the operator thinks they have to give out free boxes. So you won't get a full media centre unless like in some German cable operators they agree to provision 3rd party cable modems and cable receivers.

Satellite has more choice from Pay TV providers and FTA, and you can even to a limited extent use a different pay TV provider on Satellite.

Direct competiton rather than generic competion makes a difference.

bk

watty wrote:

They would need new gear at head end and EXPENSIVE set boxes for HD.

Yes, that is why I said cheaper set top boxes.

watty wrote:

Cable always lags satellite in provision of features because the operator thinks they have to give out free boxes. So you won't get a full media centre unless like in some German cable operators they agree to provision 3rd party cable modems and cable receivers.

Well that is only true here in Ireland really and Europe to a lesser extent.

In the US cable is far ahead of satellite, displaying HD for a few years now and delivering modern services like VOD, BB and phone.

Also in the UK, Telewest was the first company to deliver a HD service and is also delivering VOD, BB and phone services.

watty

Yes but how long have they had Sat and Terrestrial HD and PVRs in USA too?

bk

watty wrote:

Yes but how long have they had Sat and Terrestrial HD and PVRs in USA too?

Oh, no argument there, way longer then us.

Did you see that CBS is going to deliver all it's shows via VOD for free on Comcast cable. Each show will be available for 4 weeks. It will be ad supported.

It looks like VOD is taking off, but only as a free addition to existing services.

watty

Comacast uses fiber to the end of the street to make VOD work. That's not widespread here.

Freddie59

bk wrote:

a bientot, yawn, not going to happen, no one cares.
I'd have no problem with foreign language channels on Digital, but they are a complete waste of resources on analogue.

Got it in one. Well put.;)

BowWow

"As Liberty Global-UPC IRELAND prepare to announce the new line up of channels to be provided in the very basic package at the cheapest price (possibly 20 named channels for 15 euros per month) what do you think they should (or will) provide apart from the 'bread and butter' (in)famous eight........?
It is probable that all customers will be provided with decoders as has been done in a number of mainland countries.....thereby all going digital (as has happened for all former ntl MMDS customers)"

Does the above mean that Chorus/ntl will soon have a basic digital service - at the same price as the current analogue service - with 20 odd tv channels, and that STB's will be provided FOC?