Signal but cannot find the aerial?!

Unfortunately, this company produces many "eye candy" items that look really nice but...

Note that no actual gain measurement is provided and the fact that it's only 10 element puts it firmly into the "low gain" category.

 

Sam, it was very common for Telewest to provide conventional analogue TV through the distribution network, especially in areas where the developers did not want unsightly TV antennas everywhere. I think they still use this system in MK also.

 

I'm aware that they used to do that but it's not relevant now that analogue transmissions no longer exist in the UK.

In any case my statement was accurate. "you won't receive cable TV programmes without a cable TV decoder."

 

No, but they do still deliver terrestrial Freeview in those areas over the original medium. He looks to be in one of those areas, as it has an FM output (with a 75R terminator) on the isolator too.

 

[QUOTE="Sam Gangee, post: 38

In any case my statement was accurate. "you won't receive cable TV programmes without a cable TV decoder."[/QUOTE]

Not true. Many TVs have DVB-C decoders that will receive data cable channels.

 

Broadcast analogue may not exist but there is no reason why it cannot exist on cable. It certainly does in Ireland and Germany among others.

 

Link, please.

Link, please.

 

You are as capable as myself of looking up the specs of TVs. I have a JVC brand TV with a DVB-C decoder which works. I believe many Sony models have DVB-C decoders, you can check.

Have a look on Boards IE. There are various posts there regarding legacy analogue still on cable in Dublin and elsewhere. I have just been to Barcelona and the TV in my hotel room had 46 DVB-T channels and 6 analogue. This was obviously a hotel system as many of the channels were derived from satellite not local off air.

 

Obviously I was referring to the situation in the OP's region (West Midlands) so please don't muddy the waters by referring to TV and cable in Ireland and Spain. Can you provide confirmation that broadcast channels exist on the OP's cable system (in the West Midlands)? If not then your interjection and refutation of my statement was unwarranted.

 

I remember seeing a friend's analogue cable TV service back in the mid/late 90's. It was Nynex I think. The quality was very poor. Lots more channels than the then five analogue terrestrial ones obviously, but the picture looked like mediocre VHS. Didn't Cable & Wireless take over after Nynex was merged with them? I don't recall ever thinking the quality was any better. In fact, cable has never impressed me with quality.

Most of my clients have Sky. The few that cable have the Virgin digital service. My abiding impression is that their HD service looks only marginally better than SD Freeview. That's not good. VM SD looks really ropey. Lord knows what the Irish analogue cable service looks like. From what I've read though analogue cable is being phased out both in the UK and Eire. It's probably about time too as the bandwidth limits of running multi-channel analogue against a background of increased choice and quality from satellite and terrestrial must be giving those analogue cable operators some real headaches.

I'm not sure one can use Hotel TV as any kind of yardstick for comparison to regional or national domestic TV services. Although they take external feeds, they're really operating in isolation within the hotel.

Coming back to cable, and TVs that have a DVB-C tuner, I can honestly say that in the couple of hundred client homes I have visited I can't recall ever having come across anyone using cable that wasn't first connected to a Pay TV receiver box. It's little wonder people are unaware of their TVs having a cable tuner if fitted. It's not seen as a free-to-view service let alone a viable alternative to Freeview or Freesat. It just isn't on the radar.

 

Certainly broadcast channels BBC1, BBC2, ITV and CH4 exist on the OPs cable system as these four channels are subject to the "must carry" rules. Whether they are in analogue as well as digital I can't tell you as I don't have access to the system to check.

However your statement "you won't receive cable TV programmes without a cable TV decoder" I will still refute as a TV with a DVB-C decoder will receive cable TV programmes (which include the "must carry" channels) if they are not encrypted.

 

Indeed people are unaware and the TV manufacturers don't help by stating the DVB-C decoder is not for the UK. VM and its predecessors in the UK have always been a bit touchy about people connecting anything but their STB to the system, even to go as far as to say it is illegal, when it isn't. It maybe against their T & Cs but of course if one moves into a pre wired home one has not signed those T & Cs. They certainly in the post condoned people connecting an FM tuner and they supplied FM signals on the cable system.

I've tried it with the above mentioned JVC set and can confirm it works though only five channels were not encrypted.

 

Which then begs the question "Why bother? " Both Freeview and Freesat will give a much broader range of channels. Now admittedly you need either a sat dish + receiver or a aerial system with decent reception, but would anyone seriously settle for 5 channels from cable by comparison? It's a pretty lame offer if what's free to view via sat and terrestrial has to be paid for via cable.

 

I did it because I had the set and access to the cable and I wanted to see if it would work. I didn't know that there would only be five channels available.

 

Right, so in a practical sense then Sam Gangee is correct.

If all there is that's free to view (i.e. accessible by a TV's own internal DVB-C tuner) is a rather measly 5 basic channels, then surely to access the rest... and here I'm just talking about making the channel list up to what's already free to view from DVB-T and DVB-S rather than including any premium channels, so just having a level playing field of free to view channels.... then it's going to require a cable decoder box and a paid subscription.

So he was right to say"you won't receive cable TV programmes without a cable TV decoder." when talking about viewers in mainland Britain. After all, I wouldn't accept just 5 channels from cable as my full free-to-view TV service. I doubt many others would either.

 

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