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[redelitev6]

 :-? Just been watching a scary programme on channel 5 about the pilot sucked out of his plane when the windscreen blew out,noticed that on virgin digital the picture quality was iffy,flicked over to freeview and i got a chrystal clear picture , i would have thought it should have been the other way around, any ideas anyone?

[Amigo]

Virgin telly is a rip off. I have cable virgin internet. The basic telly package is worse than freeview & they want you to pay for it. The also upgrade your telly stations without you asking & expect you to pay for it.
   Or they did until i spoke to them nicely on the phone!!!

  Very happy with the broadband connection though, no landline rental to pay. Sitting in front of the telly is gay & sad so freeview is more than enough for me.

[Chris_H]

:-? Just been watching a scary programme on channel 5 about the pilot sucked out of his plane when the windscreen blew out,noticed that on virgin digital the picture quality was iffy,flicked over to freeview and i got a chrystal clear picture , i would have thought it should have been the other way around, any ideas anyone?

Interesting question.  Freeview is digital so that comparison is a bit unreal.

However, there's digital and there's digital.  Unfortunately there are an infinite number of flavours.  Assuming you are comparing the same resolution (Freeview is 576 vertical lines except on HD) then all of these channels use a variation of MPEG compression.  The less bandwidth you have available for transmission, the more you have to compress, and compression eventually gives noticeable artefacts (crap picture quality in layman's terms).  So, your Virgin probably has restricted bandwidth if the source material is of comparable resolution.

[Martin_1962]

Usually C5 on Freeview is a bit rubbish.

But a lot of SD FTA stuff seems to be best on Freeview

I know what it might be

The feed for cable might be a rebroadcast of the Freeview signal

[freecall666]

on back off free view box should say what version free view it is some of the new boxes are divx and not mpeg, also on setting in the free view box some are set to rgb or cvbs rgb is better picture i have found but it depends on your tv and how you use the box, and matching tv to box setting.

[TheBoy]

It boils down to bandwidth, and how much they allocate each channel.  Less bandwidth, means more compression, and they all use a lossy compression method.

Freeview broadcasts some channels, notably the BBC, prime ITV/Ch4/5 with decent bandwidth, thus the picture quality is often better than most cable areas (which in themself vary from region to region), and arguably better than Sky and Freesat.  However, then likes of ITV2 and ITV3 etc are broadcast with a much lower bandwidth on the Freeview platform, and this leads to a noticibly worse picture quality.

The cynic in me suggests that Sky reduced the bandwidth on many of their SD channels where they have an HD equivilent, in order to screw more money from stupid people enhance the perception of the more expensive HD...

[TheBoy]

on back off free view box should say what version free view it is some of the new boxes are divx and not mpeg, also on setting in the free view box some are set to rgb or cvbs rgb is better picture i have found but it depends on your tv and how you use the box, and matching tv to box setting.

All Freeview SD transmissions are MPEG2 based. No Freeview SD channel is MPEG4 based.

[Kevin Wood]

I know what it might be

The feed for cable might be a rebroadcast of the Freeview signal

Most probably it is taken from satellite or terrestrial at their cable head-end, and if they unpack it and re-compress at a lower bit-rate rather than distribute the original stream it will look like the dog's breakfast. Cowboys.

Kevin

[TheBoy]

I know what it might be

The feed for cable might be a rebroadcast of the Freeview signal

Most probably it is taken from satellite or terrestrial at their cable head-end, and if they unpack it and re-compress at a lower bit-rate rather than distribute the original stream it will look like the dog's breakfast. Cowboys.

Kevin

I believe there is some legal issue that they cannot just receive from Sat/terrestrial, and rebroadcast.



I also know the stupid people in Milton Keynes are in for a shock this year at DSO (MK is 100% cabled, but on a really old (from the 70s) analogue system).  People are assuming that Virgin will receive the channels digitally, and rebroadcast analogue, thus no need for STBs or new tellys.  There is some (non-technical) reason why they are not allowed to do that, so there will be 200,000 disappointed people there.  Still, most of them are on the sponge, so have Sky and bloody great flatscreens anyway....

[Kevin Wood]

I believe there is some legal issue that they cannot just receive from Sat/terrestrial, and rebroadcast.

I was half-involved in a monitoring project for cable tv head-end a long time ago. Trying to remember what they were doing. That might even have been analogue, mind.

Either way, they are probably scrimping on the bit-rate, which means they are probably re-coding whatever feed they are provided with.
 

I also know the stupid people in Milton Keynes are in for a shock this year at DSO (MK is 100% cabled, but on a really old (from the 70s) analogue system).  People are assuming that Virgin will receive the channels digitally, and rebroadcast analogue, thus no need for STBs or new tellys.  There is some (non-technical) reason why they are not allowed to do that, so there will be 200,000 disappointed people there.  Still, most of them are on the sponge, so have Sky and bloody great flatscreens anyway....

 

That I can understand.

Surely there's no room for all the shopping channels with an analogue cable feed?

Kevin

[TheBoy]

I believe there is some legal issue that they cannot just receive from Sat/terrestrial, and rebroadcast.

I was half-involved in a monitoring project for cable tv head-end a long time ago. Trying to remember what they were doing. That might even have been analogue, mind.

Either way, they are probably scrimping on the bit-rate, which means they are probably re-coding whatever feed they are provided with.
 

I also know the stupid people in Milton Keynes are in for a shock this year at DSO (MK is 100% cabled, but on a really old (from the 70s) analogue system).  People are assuming that Virgin will receive the channels digitally, and rebroadcast analogue, thus no need for STBs or new tellys.  There is some (non-technical) reason why they are not allowed to do that, so there will be 200,000 disappointed people there.  Still, most of them are on the sponge, so have Sky and bloody great flatscreens anyway....

 

That I can understand.

Surely there's no room for all the shopping channels with an analogue cable feed?

Kevin

They only have the analogue channels anyway. They used to get a couple of others included in a higher fee - Sky One type channels. These were broadcast in analogue on the cable, unencrypted, but off the edge of the usual UHF 21-69, hence the requirement to 'rent' a STB, or....

[Kevin Wood]

They only have the analogue channels anyway. They used to get a couple of others included in a higher fee - Sky One type channels. These were broadcast in analogue on the cable, unencrypted, but off the edge of the usual UHF 21-69, hence the requirement to 'rent' a STB, or....

Pre-historic stuff. Still, if it keeps them off the streets, raiding the pubs for alcopops...

Kevin

[TheBoy]

They only have the analogue channels anyway. They used to get a couple of others included in a higher fee - Sky One type channels. These were broadcast in analogue on the cable, unencrypted, but off the edge of the usual UHF 21-69, hence the requirement to 'rent' a STB, or....

Pre-historic stuff. Still, if it keeps them off the streets, raiding the pubs for alcopops...

Kevin

It was a system put in in the 1970s by the Post Office. When BT was privatised, they had to 'sell' (might be leased) it. I think Westminster Cable took it on, they got swallowed into NTL at some point, and now Virgin.

But nobody has ever updated it. Its got extended as new estates are built.  Picture quality is poor to be honest, possibly why most houses have Murdoch's gay looking rusty metal hanging off the walls.

[Debs.]

It was a system put in in the 1970s by the Post Office. When BT was privatised, they had to 'sell' (might be leased) it. I think Westminster Cable took it on, they got swallowed into NTL at some point, and now Virgin.

But nobody has ever updated it. Its got extended as new estates are built.  Picture quality is poor to be honest, possibly why most houses have Murdoch's gay looking rusty metal hanging off the walls.

I remember in my childhood; the town where my Grandmother lived had the old Rediffusion service; which I think dated back to the 50`s.

The distribution was at H.F using two tête-bêche frequencies of 5.9 and 8.9 Mhz.
The signals were distributed into houses via multipair cables at HF and Audio. (Radio and Tv.)

It seemed the height of luxury to have radio coming out of the Tv. in those days (when there were only two conventionally 'broadcast' Tv. channels and for much of the day they only showed trade-test films.

[Chris_H]

It was a system put in in the 1970s by the Post Office. When BT was privatised, they had to 'sell' (might be leased) it. I think Westminster Cable took it on, they got swallowed into NTL at some point, and now Virgin.

But nobody has ever updated it. Its got extended as new estates are built.  Picture quality is poor to be honest, possibly why most houses have Murdoch's gay looking rusty metal hanging off the walls.

I remember in my childhood; the town where my Grandmother lived had the old Rediffusion service; which I think dated back to the 50`s.

The distribution was at H.F using two tête-bêche frequencies of 5.9 and 8.9 Mhz.
The signals were distributed into houses via multipair cables at HF and Audio. (Radio and Tv.)

It seemed the height of luxury to have radio coming out of the Tv. in those days (when there were only two conventionally 'broadcast' Tv. channels and for much of the day they only showed trade-test films.

When I were a boy we used to get video over baked-bean tins.  You had to be careful what type of string you used mind you.  Some of the stuff they used down t'lotments was rubbish!

Only joking.  Just had a rush of blood to the feetbrain.

In the 70s I had a lot of fun trying to get as many analogue channels as possible onto a single rf feed so that the Sport luvvies could view all the incoming football feeds in their ivory towersoffices.  It was a horrendous task avoiding cross-channel interference etc.  Those were the days.