Analogue: Why bother switching?

ankles

I have NTL analogue. I can't understand why we are moving to digital if, as I have been told, the picture quality isn't as good. Also it's more expensive to have several tv's. I was thinking of switching to digital and also getting their broadband deal etc. but I'm going to stick with analogue to the bitter end. I don't need several hundred channels, I'm not bothered about recording twenty nine episodes of Prison Break, I have broadband with BT and am watching golf at the moment, so someone please explain to me what is the advantage of moving to NTL Digital. Thanks and sorry for the mini-rant:D

watty

In most places UPC cable Digital Quality is better.

The reasons for switching from Analogue to Digital:

1. Financial for Platform: There is about 10x as many stations possible per analogue channel, this allows either more stations or less spectrum.
   ::1/10th cost per station on Satellite.
   ::On cable the space for an Analogue channel can support 1 uncontended user at 45Mbps broadband or 200 contended users at a normal Broadband speed.
   ::On Terrestrial after analogue switch off there will be more stations, HDTV and about half the TV spectrum will be re-used for Mobile and/or Fixed Internet access (raising money for Government by sale of spectrum licence too)
2. Extra features: Auto tuning, On screen program guide, cheap HDD recording with playback equal to live quality, Widescreen, better Teletext with pictures and easier/faster navigation and Interactive features including PayPerView ordering. Also possible is to change package on the TV screen, answer queries etc (sky Interactive takes you through setup of remote for most TV sets), so less time on phone to CS agents.
   
3. Ability to have HD: HD is only supported on Digital.

In general Digital is only the same quality as good Analogue signal. "Cheaper" channels can use 1/5th or less of the "space" on digital (shopping TV or Info channels). A "slide show" channel with audio track can use about 1/25th of the space. "Cheaper" channels on Digital are lower quality than Analogue.

If UPC (formerly Chorus/NTL) got rid of all Analogue they would be able to have higher speed Broadband and higher quality on Digital due to the extra space.

The trend with TVs is for better quality ones to be Media Centre Monitor screens as a setbox with PVR functions replacing a separate DVD or VHS recorder has to be used to be appreciated, you'd never want to go back.

Some setboxes for Cable, Terrestrial or Satellite can also play your own photos or home video on the TV via the USB host sockets.

marclt

watty wrote: »

In most places UPC cable Digital Quality is better.

The reasons for switching from Analogue to Digital:

1. Financial for Platform: There is about 10x as many stations possible per analogue channel, this allows either more stations or less spectrum.
   ::1/10th cost per station on Satellite.
   ::On cable the space for an Analogue channel can support 1 uncontended user at 45Mbps broadband or 200 contended users at a normal Broadband speed.
   ::On Terrestrial after analogue switch off there will be more stations, HDTV and about half the TV spectrum will be re-used for Mobile and/or Fixed Internet access (raising money for Government by sale of spectrum licence too)
2. Extra features: Auto tuning, On screen program guide, cheap HDD recording with playback equal to live quality, Widescreen, better Teletext with pictures and easier/faster navigation and Interactive features including PayPerView ordering. Also possible is to change package on the TV screen, answer queries etc (sky Interactive takes you through setup of remote for most TV sets), so less time on phone to CS agents.
   
3. Ability to have HD: HD is only supported on Digital.

In general Digital is only the same quality as good Analogue signal. "Cheaper" channels can use 1/5th or less of the "space" on digital (shopping TV or Info channels). A "slide show" channel with audio track can use about 1/25th of the space. "Cheaper" channels on Digital are lower quality than Analogue.

If UPC (formerly Chorus/NTL) got rid of all Analogue they would be able to have higher speed Broadband and higher quality on Digital due to the extra space.

The trend with TVs is for better quality ones to be Media Centre Monitor screens as a setbox with PVR functions replacing a separate DVD or VHS recorder has to be used to be appreciated, you'd never want to go back.

Some setboxes for Cable, Terrestrial or Satellite can also play your own photos or home video on the TV via the USB host sockets.

Agree with all that Watty... and on the TV front, I was in an electrical store and all the new 'quality' blu-ray players come with wifi to link into extra content online.

Some of new Samsung, Sony and Panasonic TVs allow you to insert memory cards to watch photos and connect to the web directly so you can watch streamed content online on demand.

SPDUB

ankles wrote: »

I have NTL analogue. I can't understand why we are moving to digital if, as I have been told, the picture quality isn't as good. Also it's more expensive to have several tv's. I was thinking of switching to digital and also getting their broadband deal etc. but I'm going to stick with analogue to the bitter end. I don't need several hundred channels, I'm not bothered about recording twenty nine episodes of Prison Break, I have broadband with BT and am watching golf at the moment, so someone please explain to me what is the advantage of moving to NTL Digital. Thanks and sorry for the mini-rant:D

No point in your case as most of the points watty outlined don't apply in your case

It costs more financially to have TV in each room

DVR not needed if you're not bothered about recording twenty nine episodes of Prison Break

Most channels are rubbish and with a few exceptions , especially if you are not into Sports and Movies , the good ones are already available on analogue

Allowing NTL to make more money out of you (HD,DVR not Free) by providing facilities you are perfectly happy without is not a reason to go to Digital

watty

The Analogue on Cable will be phased out. It's very poor compared to Digital or Off Air Analogue. It's UPC's service and it makes sense for them and the consumer to do this.

In the longer term the cable consumer will have a better service. If you want lots of free channels in each room then a Multiswitch + satellite dish is the way to go.

The "Bitter End" may not be far away. Have you compared picture with a decent TV on BBC1 FTA satellite or decent TV aerial Analogue RTE? It's rubbish in comparison.

bk

ankles if you get UPC digital, you get to keep the analogue for use in your other rooms, you get more channels with better picture quality and it actually works out cheaper then analogue.

Analogue: €24.50
Digital Value: €20

And remember with Digital Value, you actually get to keep the analogue TV service for the other rooms, it is a no brainer.

lucernarian

I've seen lots of NTL and Chorus cable analogue, and NTL and Chorus MMDS digital. Chorus MMDS and NTL digital truly look like tetris in comparison to NTL analogue, especially on larger 40" flat TV screens and the likes. That bothers me more than the wrong aspect ratios on NTL analogue.

Picture quality wouldn't be digital's selling point for me. But at least getting digital NTL means you have the more channels and features etc. of digital, while still having the ability to use analogue as before, and anywhere in the house at no extra charge.

Pat Gleeson

Does anyone have a timeline for the phasing out of analogue cable (Limerick in particular)?

My mum is concerned about digital, and would prefer to keep the "tried and tested" cable service she has, thank you very much.

SPDUB

bk wrote: »

ankles if you get UPC digital, you get to keep the analogue for use in your other rooms, you get more channels with better picture quality and it actually works out cheaper then analogue.

That should read to make it absolutly clear

if you get UPC digital, you get to keep the analogue for use in your other rooms, you get more channels with better picture quality in one room only and it actually works out cheaper then analogue

One other financial thing I remembered is that you will have to pay by direct debit and so if there is mistake NTL can grab the money and make you work to get if back

Analogue is the only way to pay yearly or if for some reason you don't have a bank account

zilog_jones

Analogue cable is terrible. Here's why
- Except for the national terrestrial channels, it's all the sourced from their digital cable system, so any points about digital cable being more blocky are invalid.
- No widescreen, except for some channels with broken aspect ratios which look wrong on any non-widescreen TV
- Terrible mono audio on most channels (in Limerick anyway, only national terrestrial channels have NICAM), some with crosstalk from adjascent channels
- PAL colour - 1960s technology which leads to dot crawl, colour bleeding, rainbowing and other artifacts - and worse than off air terrestrial analogue TV because they use cheaper modulators. Modern TVs are better at filtering out that stuff but no amount of comb filters and other processing will remove it all and the colour resolution is still quite low. Digital cable (with YPbPr component video just like on DVDs) suffers from none of the above, assuming you're using the RGB output.

With digital cable you get an EPG, and the DVR (or Digital+ or whatever they want to call it now) offers recording functionality you will not get with any analogue TV solution.

p15574

I DO think digital is better, and better value too as has been pointed out (analogue only = 24.50, analogue PLUS digital = 20.00), but have to point out some inaccuracies above (or my misunderstanding?).
- You don't need digital to have a dvr/pvr - I've been happily recording analogue for years on a dvr, with pause of live tv, full program guide for the week ahead etc.
- It plays at exactly the same quality as the live signal too.
- I watch widescreen analogue tv - not sure what exactly's meant by the "broken aspect ratio" comment. Might possibly need to manually change aspect ratio to the desired one with analogue, perhaps, whereas digital automatically changes?

I'd also be interested if anyone knows any possible timeline for analogue phase-out (UPC Dublin).

zilog_jones

zilog_jones wrote: »

- Terrible mono audio on most channels (in Limerick anyway, only national terrestrial channels have NICAM), some with crosstalk from adjascent channels.

Certainly true in Limerick but all the channels on the Dublin network with the exception of E4 and 3e are in NICAM.

Most of the time on the Dublin network the UK terrestrials are sourced off air, therefore using 14:9 widescreen. However they are sometimes sourced digitally so use 16:9 letterbox in these cases. All of the satellite channels except E4 use 4:3 cropped, E4 is in 14:9, while 3e is 16:9 anamorphic with no 16:9 flag set (so nearly always shows up wrong). But it's also wrong on Sky so this seems to be 3e themselves.

STB

This question seems to be about moving from Analogue NTL to Digital NTL.

Would this not belong somewhere else mods.

Analogue Cable has nothing to do with Analogue Terrestrial. Some people might get confused.

My 2cents worth - NTL have a cheek calling it digital when you have to use a scart connection to link to your TV. Digital in an Analogue world!

I dont have it myself as I dont pay for stuff that is free to air already. NTL still using mpeg2 encoding ? How high is their bitrate anyway ?

watty

VGA is Analogue and supports higher than HD resolution. It's very similar to RGB SCART.

All my digital receivers have RGB out. Analogue transmissions only give Composite on a receiver. Your confusing the disadvantages of Composite PAL with Digital Originated RGB. HDMI is about copy protection and of no value to people without HD sets.

icdg

Pat Gleeson wrote: »

Does anyone have a timeline for the phasing out of analogue cable (Limerick in particular)?

My mum is concerned about digital, and would prefer to keep the "tried and tested" cable service she has, thank you very much.

Two sections are already done - Cork city and the entire NTL MMDS network. I would imagine the next section to be done will be the Chorus MMDS network and after that they might tackle some of the smaller cable franchises which will be easier to get everyone switched over to digital on.

Whichever plan they have, my strong bet is that Dublin will be the last area to switch.

STB

watty wrote: »

VGA is Analogue and supports higher than HD resolution. It's very similar to RGB SCART.

All my digital receivers have RGB out. Analogue transmissions only give Composite on a receiver. Your confusing the disadvantages of Composite PAL with Digital Originated RGB. HDMI is about copy protection and of no value to people without HD sets.

I was getting at the quality on HD TVs. I've seen some of those NTL Pace boxes (Scart Out only) and the quality is rubbish when connected to a HD TV.

A simple example. I know someone who was using a Panasonic Freesat HD LCD using a scart for watch pay NTL for sport in a pub. I've seen people reactions when the Freesat HD tuner (even the SD sat content) or MPEG4 SD DTT broadcasts. Huge difference. Makes you wonder which one is paytv !

An interesting blog.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/10/the_scourge_of_scart.html

10000maniacs

watty wrote: »

better Teletext with pictures and easier/faster navigation and Interactive features including PayPerView ordering. .

Can I correct you. Teletext does not exist on UPC digital, nor does Interactive functionality.
Picture quality will take a large leap when high def comes to UPC, but standard SD is pretty poor compared to uncompressed analogue in a decent terrestrial area.

Ranicand

10000maniacs wrote: »

Can I correct you. Teletext does not exist on UPC digital, nor does Interactive functionality.
Picture quality will take a large leap when high def comes to UPC, but standard SD is pretty poor compared to uncompressed analogue in a decent terrestrial area.

Your wrong on two of your points.

Euronews channel 203 has text.
HD is already on UPC.
As regards your other point you 100% correct standard digital is no match for a good analogue picture and especially and over compressed digital picture.