NTL Digital PVR???

belmulletman

Hey,
so i was just reading SiliconRepublic and, seemingly NTL are just about to conclude the Tender for PVR systmes:



"1.07.2005 - Cable operator NTL has told siliconrepublic.com that the company is within reach of hitting 130,000 homes in Dublin, Galway and Waterford capable of receiving its broadband services. The company also revealed that it is about to conclude a tender process for personal video recorder (PVR) set-top boxes, and may select two manufacturers.
NTL Ireland sales and marketing director Mark Mohan (pictured) confirmed that some 13,000 NTL customers are paying for its broadband services – an increase of 9,000 on last year. “We are pleased with this progress, which effectively gives us 10pc penetration of our available market for broadband.”

In April, the company increased the speeds of its broadband services by over 100pc. Under the enhancement, services that were previously 300Kbps are now 1Mbps for €25 a month. As well as this services that were 750Kbps will be expanded to 2Mbps for €35 a month and services that were originally 1.5Mbps will be doubled to 3Mbps for €45 per month. “We have the lowest network contention ratio in the marketplace for broadband, with a rate of 17 to one, compared with 40 to one under Eircom’s services,” Mohan said.

Mohan confirmed that the company is moving to upgrade its network to be capable of carrying digital telephony as well as broadband and digital TV. “The intention is to roll out the full triple-play package and we have placed a priority on this.

“In terms of digital telephony, we hope to announce something in the near future. The product that we are developing sits nicely on top of our broadband infrastructure.”

Mohan explained that while 100,000 of the company’s Dublin customer base will be enabled for broadband, it is planning to make its complete customer bases in Galway and Waterford capable of receiving broadband.

In May, European cable giant UGC – which also owns Chorus – emerged as the potential owner of NTL’s Irish operations. Morgan Stanley, operating on UGC’s behalf, acquired NTL Ireland for €325m. UGC has since stated it intends to acquire NTL Ireland from Morgan Stanley for €329m, which includes a €4m administrative charge, pending approval from the Competition Authority of Ireland.

It is believed that key to UGC’s success as a bidder for NTL Ireland was its capacity to invest a further €200m in NTL’s infrastructure.

While Mohan didn’t discuss the acquisition, he gave an insight into what an upgrade of NTL’s existing infrastructure could involve.

“The existing standard for cable in Ireland is DOCSIS 1.0. We have begun deploying the DOCSIS 2.0 standard and are conducting trials in relation to DOCSIS 3.0. “If 3.0 passes the trials, we will deploy it straight away. DOCSIS 3.0 will enable us to launch the extreme broadband products deployed over cable in Holland and Austria – speeds ranging from 10Mb per second up to 30Mb per second – that’s the truly phenomenal territory we are heading into. We see a great future in terms of what cable can do for broadband speeds.”

Mohan said that in the months ahead, NTL Ireland will be striving to boost its existing digital television offerings by adding extra channels and rolling out PVR technology with hard drives in the range of around 80Gb-plus. “We are in the concluding stages of a tendering process and hope to announce at least two partners. The PVRs will have substantial storage and will include a brand new set-top box for customers who want to avail of digital video recording.”

According to analyst firm In-Stat, unprecedented consumer demand has pushed sales of PVR products tremendously during the past year, with global unit shipments rocketing from 4.6 million in 2003 to over 11.4 million in 2004.

In-Stat says the demand stems from increased consumer awareness about the concept of time-shifting television programming. Pay-TV service providers and PVR manufacturers are reaping the benefits, the high-tech research firm reports.

“The deployment of PVR products has been a success story for pay-TV providers and consumer electronics manufacturers,” said In-Stat analyst Mike Paxton. “While the current growth of PVRs is being spurred by satellite TV set-top box products and DVD recorders with built-in hard disk drives, other product segments like cable TV set-top box-based PVRs are also flying off the shelves.”



This should be intersting... they can't even keep a basic digital system running properly, and now they want to start with PVR's....
Listen NTL... get what you've got working properly, and give us intereactive TV, before you make a ball's of another system, well i suppose it's better to have 3 crap systems that don't work properly, than one good one that does...
oh wait... NO IT ISN'T!!!!!!!

Marcopolo85

belmulletman wrote:

Hey,
so i was just reading SiliconRepublic and, seemingly NTL are just about to conclude the Tender for PVR systmes:



"1.07.2005 - Cable operator NTL has told siliconrepublic.com that the company is within reach of hitting 130,000 homes in Dublin, Galway and Waterford capable of receiving its broadband services. The company also revealed that it is about to conclude a tender process for personal video recorder (PVR) set-top boxes, and may select two manufacturers.
NTL Ireland sales and marketing director Mark Mohan (pictured) confirmed that some 13,000 NTL customers are paying for its broadband services – an increase of 9,000 on last year. “We are pleased with this progress, which effectively gives us 10pc penetration of our available market for broadband.”

In April, the company increased the speeds of its broadband services by over 100pc. Under the enhancement, services that were previously 300Kbps are now 1Mbps for €25 a month. As well as this services that were 750Kbps will be expanded to 2Mbps for €35 a month and services that were originally 1.5Mbps will be doubled to 3Mbps for €45 per month. “We have the lowest network contention ratio in the marketplace for broadband, with a rate of 17 to one, compared with 40 to one under Eircom’s services,” Mohan said.

Mohan confirmed that the company is moving to upgrade its network to be capable of carrying digital telephony as well as broadband and digital TV. “The intention is to roll out the full triple-play package and we have placed a priority on this.

“In terms of digital telephony, we hope to announce something in the near future. The product that we are developing sits nicely on top of our broadband infrastructure.”

Mohan explained that while 100,000 of the company’s Dublin customer base will be enabled for broadband, it is planning to make its complete customer bases in Galway and Waterford capable of receiving broadband.

In May, European cable giant UGC – which also owns Chorus – emerged as the potential owner of NTL’s Irish operations. Morgan Stanley, operating on UGC’s behalf, acquired NTL Ireland for €325m. UGC has since stated it intends to acquire NTL Ireland from Morgan Stanley for €329m, which includes a €4m administrative charge, pending approval from the Competition Authority of Ireland.

It is believed that key to UGC’s success as a bidder for NTL Ireland was its capacity to invest a further €200m in NTL’s infrastructure.

While Mohan didn’t discuss the acquisition, he gave an insight into what an upgrade of NTL’s existing infrastructure could involve.

“The existing standard for cable in Ireland is DOCSIS 1.0. We have begun deploying the DOCSIS 2.0 standard and are conducting trials in relation to DOCSIS 3.0. “If 3.0 passes the trials, we will deploy it straight away. DOCSIS 3.0 will enable us to launch the extreme broadband products deployed over cable in Holland and Austria – speeds ranging from 10Mb per second up to 30Mb per second – that’s the truly phenomenal territory we are heading into. We see a great future in terms of what cable can do for broadband speeds.”

Mohan said that in the months ahead, NTL Ireland will be striving to boost its existing digital television offerings by adding extra channels and rolling out PVR technology with hard drives in the range of around 80Gb-plus. “We are in the concluding stages of a tendering process and hope to announce at least two partners. The PVRs will have substantial storage and will include a brand new set-top box for customers who want to avail of digital video recording.”

According to analyst firm In-Stat, unprecedented consumer demand has pushed sales of PVR products tremendously during the past year, with global unit shipments rocketing from 4.6 million in 2003 to over 11.4 million in 2004.

In-Stat says the demand stems from increased consumer awareness about the concept of time-shifting television programming. Pay-TV service providers and PVR manufacturers are reaping the benefits, the high-tech research firm reports.

“The deployment of PVR products has been a success story for pay-TV providers and consumer electronics manufacturers,” said In-Stat analyst Mike Paxton. “While the current growth of PVRs is being spurred by satellite TV set-top box products and DVD recorders with built-in hard disk drives, other product segments like cable TV set-top box-based PVRs are also flying off the shelves.”



This should be intersting... they can't even keep a basic digital system running properly, and now they want to start with PVR's....
Listen NTL... get what you've got working properly, and give us intereactive TV, before you make a ball's of another system, well i suppose it's better to have 3 crap systems that don't work properly, than one good one that does...
oh wait... NO IT ISN'T!!!!!!!

I'll take a PVR over 'interactivity' anytime!

Mossy Monk

Marcopolo85 wrote:

I'll take a PVR over 'interactivity' anytime!

PVR's are the dogs nuts tbh

Marcopolo85

Mossy Monk wrote:

PVR's are the dogs nuts tbh

Sure are.

I have a Panasonic DVD-RAM recorder (which is similar but not quite as sophisticated as Sky+), but the time slip facility is great for watching programmes with lots of ads like on Sky One and TV3.

Mossy Monk

yep, i have a Panasonic DVD-RAM recorder myself. dead handy for the terrestrials and recording from the Sky+ onto DVD

belmulletman

Don't get me wrong... PVR's are great... i've got a Philips HDD / DVD Recorder my self... but the current state of NTL digital (dropping constantly, low bit rates, slow response), do you really think they are going to be able to even come close to what Sky+ has??

SteM

I've got a Tosh HD/DVD recorder but I'd still get a PVR from NTL provided their 'series link' functionality worked. It seems to be one of the real perks of Sky+.

Marcopolo85

belmulletman wrote:

Don't get me wrong... PVR's are great... i've got a Philips HDD / DVD Recorder my self... but the current state of NTL digital (dropping constantly, low bit rates, slow response), do you really think they are going to be able to even come close to what Sky+ has??

Remains to be seen.......but at least they're trying. It will be interesting to see the pricing.

bk

I have a Tivo (imported from the US and hacked to work in Ireland - not easy) working with NTL Digital service.

It is absolutely great, once you have used a PVR, you will wonder how you ever survived without one.

However NTL will need to fix two things to make it work properly:

1) You need to have a 2 week Electronic Programme Guide (EPG) in order to make the best use of a PVR, so you can plan ahead and record shows.

2) The Stability of the NTL digital service needs to vastly improve.
With a PVR, you don't tend to watch shows when they are on, instead you leave the PVR record them and watch the show at a later time.

However, NTL is always failing and stalling, giving error messages asking you to reinsert the card etc. This is no good for a PVR, the number of times I have come home after a weekend away, only to find that the NTL box failed and dispalyed an error message and that I have missed all the shows that I wanted to watch. It is extremely irritating and certainly not good enough for a service NTL will probably charge you for.

NTL sort these problems out and your PVR would be great.

BTW if the PVR could record shows in MPEG4 rather then MPEG2, that would also be great as you can fit far more shows on a HD with the same picture quality.

icdg

The interview with Mohan is in short form in today's Indo. I would question the wisdom of NTL developing a PVR using its current platform if they are going to be switching platform once they are acquired however.

chorus techy

Marcopolo85 wrote:

Remains to be seen.......but at least they're trying. It will be interesting to see the pricing.

It sure will. And hopefully, when/if they launch, they will put back on an 8day EPG on the PVR, as 3 days is not really far enough into the future considering their EPG does not have "Series Link" features. And maybe drop all those stupid "+1" channels and replace them with something more decent.

Guy:Incognito

chorus techy wrote:

And maybe drop all those stupid "+1" channels and replace them with something more decent.

Or just spread the extra bandwidth around to improve other channels.

NTL if your listening get trouble into the channel line up, I miss the shows.

bk

chorus techy wrote:

It sure will. And hopefully, when/if they launch, they will put back on an 8day EPG on the PVR, as 3 days is not really far enough into the future considering their EPG does not have "Series Link" features. And maybe drop all those stupid "+1" channels and replace them with something more decent.

Actually the +1 and remix channels become far more useful when you have a PVR.

If you want to record two shows that are on at the same time on your PVR, you can record the repeat of one of the shows. It is very handy, I use it all the time, very handy. *

What you will find with a PVR is that you no longer care when a show is on or even what channel it is on, in fact I couldn't even tell you what time/channel most of the shows I watch are on, the Tivo just records them for me

* Yes I do know that Sky+ has two tuners so you can record two shows at the same time.