Anyone on Virgin Broadband?

[devonwoody]

My old vcr wouldnt work on the v box, so purchased a new vcr with dvd input and they both work OK

Might be if I had followed Bobs advice above the old vcr might have worked.

 

[wizer]

Thanks Bob, I think I get it. I just need to call sky now and see what my chances are of ducking out of their contract.... and then finding the £65 for a v+ box. :roll: :wink:

 

[9fingers]

RF gives you a pretty grotty picture though. Pity seeing as how the stuff that comes down the wire is digital.

Cobblers!

The signal down the cable is RF. Always has been and until we get optical fibre into the houses it will always be RF.

Bob

Cobblers...cobblers !

There's a world of difference between what is actually modulated on the RF. In the case of what comes down the line, it's digital. In the case of the RF aerial feed it's a grotty rubbishy modulated analogue coded signal.

I don't disagree about the modulation Roger, but what comes out the cable from VM is a bunch of RF carriers. The modulation is more tolerant of interference, intermodulation products and noise which can provide a better picture under poorer signal conditions.

Bob

 

[RogerS]

I understand what you're saying Bob and it probably reflects my misunderstanding of exactly what is on VMs cable. I'd assumed (wrongly I now realise ... I think) that what was carried over the RF was an all-digital signal. But I guess that they also transmit an analogue signal which is the normal TV channel and which is what you were referring to?

 

[9fingers]

I understand what you're saying Bob and it probably reflects my misunderstanding of exactly what is on VMs cable. I'd assumed (wrongly I now realise ... I think) that what was carried over the RF was an all-digital signal. But I guess that they also transmit an analogue signal which is the normal TV channel and which is what you were referring to?

No. VM no longer carry analogue modulated signals - well at least not down my way and we still get analogue free to air broadcasts.

What I meant was that both cable and satellite systems broadcast an RF carrier with digital modulation but the underlying signal is an analogue RF waveform with coded modulation that offers better resistance to interference that is until the signal drops below a certain level when the digits cannot estimate what was being sent.

In fact all digital signals no matter what data they carry are a special case of analogue ones but that is possibly being a little pedantic - even for me!

Even the content of your hard disc is analogue!

:wink:

Bob

 

[wizer]

hmm having just read a report from November 09 that Virgin will be teaming up with Tivo makes me wonder if I should wait. As a massive fan of Tivo, I reluctantly decommissioned my series 1 Thomson Tivo box to move to a more convenient, but less functional Sky+. I wonder if Virgin will be upgrading all their V+ boxes for free? Doubt that very much.

 

[RogerS]

hmm having just read a report from November 09 that Virgin will be teaming up with Tivo makes me wonder if I should wait. As a massive fan of Tivo, I reluctantly decommissioned my series 1 Thomson Tivo box to move to a more convenient, but less functional Sky+. I wonder if Virgin will be upgrading all their V+ boxes for free? Doubt that very much.

Interesting, Tom. What functionality does Sky+ lack cf. TiVo?

SWMBO is also a fan of TiVo but, with the impending demise of analogue TV so that we can all watch more shopping channels and re-runs of things that we never watched the first time around, I'm looking at what options are out there.

 

[wizer]

My morphine effected brain is struggling to remember all of them. One is the function where it records the stuff it thinks you'd like to watch. The main reason I was a fan of the series one tivo in the UK was that you could 'hack' it. This meant I could triple the storage capacity, hook it up to the network, rip content to my pc, stream, etc, etc. I'm not sure if that will be available with these new boxes, but I hope so. Tivo just seems more 'friendly' than sky's own in house software. They appear to be willing to upgrade and try new things, whereas sky chose their software and suck.

 

[devonwoody]

Hi. Wizer, had some email spam from Gizoo today advertising a Wireless mini AV sender for transmitting to a second TV in the home, any interest?
Anyone got one?

 

[jlawrence]

Roger, the options are reasonable if you're only going freeview. With Sky, using anything other than their boxes is a right pita - and sky boxes suck, they've a habit of resetting themselves and deleting anything you've got recorded. Understandably they don't want you streaming stuff to a home network - they'd loose income from multi-room. One day sky will wake up and realise that people want solutions for watching in any room without having to have multiple boxes every where - it can be done but not without some major headaches.