Chorus Cable..

Kali

Hi from boards.ie lads ..
anyway I'm not going to rant about their service or anything, I was just wondering if anyone knows if they are planning to transmit all their stations (not just Irish national stations) in stereo in future, instead of the (ridiculous in this day and age) mono at the moment.
I'm just curious again as during the weekend BBC1 was coming through in stereo for some unknown (yet welcomed) reason.
Any information or even any clues as to why they are transmitting in mono in the first place would be great.
Cheers,
Ken

LegacyUser

Hi Kali,

Ages ago, I was talking to a sound engineer who works for Chorus (it was MultiChannel at the time) and he said the reason that we were not getting stereo was to do with their ancient scrambling technique. When BBC1 was coming through in stereo did you notice if it was in the clear or was it through the box ??? The engineer said that there was no technical reason why the Irish channels could not be broadcast in stereo as they were never scrambled on the cable system.

LegacyUser

I think the boxes would require a NICAM encoder to send the signal on to the TV, wouldn't they. Or a SCART socket. And the MMDS boxes certainly don't have one of those. Which is a bit strange (and illegal possibly?)

Kali

Hmm that was my point.. the Irish channels do already come through in stereo with the cable, but not English stations.

Dont quite know what you mean by in the clear or through the box...

I am btw just going with what my TV tells me is Nicam or not... it could be lying, although there is a very noticable difference in quality between mono and stereo and I dont think my ears are being deceived

Stephen

We have chorus MMDS here - and its the same - the only channels that come through in nicam stereo are the terrestrial ones.

Pants.

LegacyUser

Originally posted by Kali:
Hmm that was my point.. the Irish channels do already come through in stereo with the cable, but not English stations.

Could people please stop using the phrase "English stations"? They are not - you either get an NI or Welsh version of a UK (or if you wish, British) station.

Rant over! :-)




[This message has been edited by Richard (edited 10-05-2001).]

LegacyUser

I can't say that I have checked recently but previously none of the channels came through the cable in stereo. I still have the cable but it is not connected to a stereo TV so it's a bit hard to check if the signals are stereo now.

By in the clear I mean that sometimes the channels are not scrambled. If you just plug the cable directly into the TV you can always get the Irish channels (and the local channel and TV5). Recently I believe that UTV and BBC1 were also unscrambled.

If you use a splitter and split the cable, it may be possible to have these channels tuned into the TV all of the time. This means that you can watch one channel and tape another (limited by which channels are clear).

icdg

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Richard:

Could people please stop using the phrase "English stations"? They are not - you either get an NI or Welsh version of a UK (or if you wish, British) station.

</font>

Unless you live in Dungarven where they get BBC ONE network feed (from SkyDigital)...