Will Eircom ever start offering digital TV?

omg a kitty

Does anyone know if Eircom will ever start offering digital TV?
If they did, I would happily leave UPC and get Eircom again:P

djimi

Down the phone lines like? Not on the crap they have strewn around the country they wont... Eircom lines can barely handle broadband; I doubt they could handle digital tv.

Kensington

Not anytime soon.
Their copper network struggles in many places to carry basic broadband as it is. IPTV needs a solid, stable connection, and that's before you start factoring in sharing the line between IPTV and actual internet usage.

They did trial a while back as far as I know, but it never went any further.

Eamo71

Kensington wrote: »

Not anytime soon.
Their copper network struggles in many places to carry basic broadband as it is. IPTV needs a solid, stable connection, and that's before you start factoring in sharing the line between IPTV and actual internet usage.

They did trial a while back as far as I know, but it never went any further.

Aren't they still doing dial up?? ;-)

Frank2k

I was under the impression that a 2Mb line is all that's needed with a relative low contention ratio would do the trick?

Doesn't Magnet offer IPTV (or is that history to) or are they on their own fiber network?

MyKeyG

Frank2k wrote: »

I was under the impression that a 2Mb line is all that's needed with a relative low contention ratio would do the trick?

Doesn't Magnet offer IPTV (or is that history to) or are they on their own fiber network?

According to their website they do but I was talking to one of their reps a month ago and it wasn't on offer.

Kensington

Frank2k wrote: »

I was under the impression that a 2Mb line is all that's needed with a relative low contention ratio would do the trick?

Doesn't Magnet offer IPTV (or is that history to) or are they on their own fiber network?

They offer Magnet Entertainment only in a few developments where they have fibre.

2Mb isn't really enough for IPTV. You'd need to allow for 4Mb-6Mb so that the picture doesn't go into youtube-style mess when there's a lot of movement on screen. And then you have to factor in what happens if someone wants to watch TV and surf the net, at the same time?

paulm17781

Frank2k wrote: »

I was under the impression that a 2Mb line is all that's needed with a relative low contention ratio would do the trick?

When Eircom were trialling IPTV, it was a 12Mbps connection with 10Mbps reserved for TV. With 2Mbps you wouldn't get a good picture (no chance of HD), taking channels would take an age and you wouldn't be able to use the net.

watty

A 2Mbps line is rubbish for Tv
A DSL connection needs CBR and QOS. You need 4Mbps on top of data speed at least to be equivalent to stat-mux multiplex or transponder running only 1.7Mbps vbr average. Maybe more + FEC to avoide packet loss.

Then you can only have SD and one screen. BT does it by having a box with large cache/HDD and Freeview receiver for regular channels. Plus expensive servers in exchange.

It's pointless here unless you use fibre or Coax.

Steviemak

eircom's Fibre to the home trials in dublin and wexford will include a Tv offering. If successful and they can source funding expect them to roll out fibre to the home in UPC area's initially. Still years away however.

oneweb

I got to see some of their trial IPTV and was very disappointed. The channels took seconds to change, the signal was pretty poor (RTE was in black and white, I kid you not! Probably just a config issue), the interface was appalling and there was no way it was or could handle HD. The trial was pulled disappointingly but unsurprisingly.