UPC (ntl/chorus) taking questions on The Last Word shortly

nicelives

There's a rep from UPC taking questions shortly on Today FM if you want to submit them to Matt Cooper, will be listening.

nicelives

Short but interesting interview with one of the UPC Ireland managers.
In terms of complaints, he acknowledged the deplorable customer services, aparently due to new staff, training etc and the blip caused by the billing change, they are now able to answer 90% of calls.

Chorus digital customers are from today to be able to receive the 100 extra channels ntl didgital customers can receive.

MMDS is now fully digital.

Digital recording (ala Sky +) is currently being tested in Dublin, obviously by non-boards users and will be launched to the general public next month !! Great to finally have a time.

watty

Long over due on MMDS. A great step forward.

patrickmooney

WOW! A PVR next month! Looking forword to seeing pricing!

byte

Chorus MMDS in Donegal Town is most definitely not digital.

watty

I'm sure you'll let us know when they change!

RuggieBear

a pvr!!!!!? Awesome

loyatemu

I'd definitely be interested in a PVR if it is comparable to Sky+, but i'll believe it when I see it.

rogue-entity

A PVR.. lets hope they sell a future proofed version that will handle HD, I mean since more and more people have HD-capable televisions these days, and SkyHD available, it would make sense for them to have a HD-ready decoder (probably one that supports MPEG2 and MPEG4, though I am not holding my breath.

watty

I don't think anyone uses MPEG2 for HD anymore. MPEG4 will also let them ultimately double the number of ordinary channels apart from HD bandwidth usage.

daphil

Chorus digital customers are from today to be able to receive the 100 extra channels ntl didgital customers can receive.[/FONT]

Only extra channel on chorus digital in Cork is Setanta
dave

JDxtra

A PVR is next to USELESS without a good, reliable EPG. NTL do not even nearly have a good or reliable EPG.

Arguably a DVD recorder would be more useful on NTL at the moment.

Here's where they need to improve:

- Last year, the time was off by 1 hour on all channels for about a month. Unacceptable.
- You can only ever browse a few hours ahead on the EPG. Never mind the next day, or later in the week!
- It is PAINFULLY slow to browse the existing EPG. It nearly always just says " Gathering data...".
- It's not as flexible as Sky e.g. when a program over runs or there's a last minute change the NTL guide just stays with the old data.
- They need a series link feature.

So, I wouldn't be getting too excited about an NTL PVR just yet. Yes, they "might" release a PVR at some stage this year - but will it be worth the wait?? :rolleyes:

sgarvan

nicelives wrote:

MMDS is now fully digital.

does this mean that the stations that MMDS could not receive due to frequency levels (what I was told when I rang NTL) will start appearing. For example I live in North County Dublin, have MMDS and only have 5 music stations where my girlfriends parents have full NTL digital and they have double or treble that.

nicelives

byte wrote:

Chorus MMDS in Donegal Town is most definitely not digital.

You should give them a buzz and say that UPC's sales manager was on Today FM saying MMDS is now all digital and is available to 80% of the country which I presume would include Donegal town, sure why not.
The PVR is supposed to be 'competitively priced' as he said, the podcast is still available on itunes, not sure if it's replaced by the latest show or archived. The interview was just after 6.30pm.

MarkR

nicelives wrote:

available to 80% of the country which I presume would include Donegal town, sure why not.

1/5 chance it's not in the 80% though?

nicelives

nicelives wrote:

You should give them a buzz and say that UPC's sales manager was on Today FM saying MMDS is now all digital and is available to 80% of the country which I presume would include Donegal town, sure why not.
The PVR is supposed to be 'competitively priced' as he said, the podcast is still available on itunes, not sure if it's replaced by the latest show or archived. The interview was just after 6.30pm.

sure listen it to yourslef at
http://audio.todayfm.com/audio/20070308180010.mp3
it's half way through, just after half six.

JDxtra

nicelives wrote:

sure listen it to yourslef at
http://audio.todayfm.com/audio/20070308180010.mp3
it's half way through, just after half six.

Cheers for the link. Starts at 37mins.

It was good to hear - Matt had no problem pressing him about the poor customer service. There was a lot of "yes, we hold our hands up on that one". But as one texter said the customer service problems were there long before they migrated to whatever new internal system they moved to (which was his excuse for everything really!).

The Irish Times guy at the start had his facts a little off though.

rogue-entity

Watty, what I ment was, UPC still use MPEG2 DVB-C for their digital services, so, any PVR they release would have to work on those older services, I suspect that it would also be MPEG-4 capable since they will eventually switch over to MPEG-4 and then eventually start adding HD channels. But I agree as well, NTL needs much better system software. Sky's is nice and simple, and I have to hand it to them (sky) their system works far better then the competition.

watty

All MPEG4 stuff is backward compatible. Usually premium channels 1st to defray roll out costs, then later change over the rest.

The UI is good on sky. Sadly many FTA nad PayTV satellite receivers with much better HW and "features" are terrible to use. The best HW IMO is Reelbox (DVB-c, DVB-t, DVB-s, DVB-s2, up to 4 tuners, firewire, scart, USB, WiFi, DVD writer, HDD, ethernet, s-video etc, neotion CAM, 2x CI, MPEG2, MPEG4, video streaming, HDMI option etc) but among the worst User Interface.

KeRbDoG

sgarvan wrote:

does this mean that the stations that MMDS could not receive due to frequency levels (what I was told when I rang NTL) will start appearing. For example I live in North County Dublin, have MMDS and only have 5 music stations where my girlfriends parents have full NTL digital and they have double or treble that.

Its got to do with bandwidth, Digital MMDS doesn't have enough bandwidth to provide you with as many channels as true digital cable.
Maybe as someone suggests that they move to mpeg4 from mpeg2 with a hdtv upgrade MMDS Digital customers will get more channels.

I'm on MMDS in Swords itself, and it sucks knowing that an estate 100m up the road have true cable

KeRbDoG

rogue-entity wrote:

Watty, what I ment was, UPC still use MPEG2 DVB-C for their digital services, so, any PVR they release would have to work on those older services, I suspect that it would also be MPEG-4 capable since they will eventually switch over to MPEG-4 and then eventually start adding HD channels. But I agree as well, NTL needs much better system software. Sky's is nice and simple, and I have to hand it to them (sky) their system works far better then the competition.

from what I've noticed:
ntl - dvb-c
chorus - dvb-t

watty

At 2.5GHz (MMDS), the DVB-t has little advantage over DVB-c (Almost no multipath). It simply makes the receiver/decoders more expensive. Using DVB-c on MMDS means the same receiver/ decoder can be supplied for Cable or MMDS.

There is no advantage to DVB-t on cable.

KeRbDoG

Someone should have told Chorus that when they started to role out the digital service

Solair

The small NTL box is actually classified by Pace as a DVB-T box by the way!!

gireland

I was just talking to a Service guy for UPC about this PVR system and i have a few points of note:
1) It's about the size of a DVD Player (no surprise there, considering there's a HDD and what not it there)
2) looks like interactivity is coming in! He said they have been working on upgrading the Upstream aspect of the network and that the PVR system has a cable modem in there for Interactive Features
3) One of those features will be what Sky just rolled out. you will be able to Call/Text your UPC box and set it to record a show you may have forgotten to set up (he couldn't say if that would be available at launch, but i'd be surprised if it wasn't)
4) It should be available in the next 6 or so weeks (personally, i'll believe that when i see it!)

podgeandrodge

JDxtra wrote:

-
- You can only ever browse a few hours ahead on the EPG. Never mind the next day, or later in the week!
- It is PAINFULLY slow to browse the existing EPG. It nearly always just says " Gathering data...".
- It's not as flexible as Sky e.g. when a program over runs or there's a last minute change the NTL guide just stays with the old data.
- They need a series link feature.

So, I wouldn't be getting too excited about an NTL PVR just yet. Yes, they "might" release a PVR at some stage this year - but will it be worth the wait?? :rolleyes:

Yes, you know an EPG is useless when you go looking for a newspaper or tvguide magazine!


BTW just go to www.ntl.ie and try out their "what services are available in your area" - CRAP. I tried Dublin 6 (where broadband is only available in certain parts) and whatever rubbish you type in as street address it says "broadband available"..