Telewest/NTL HD Interview - What should we ask?

[popper]

Last chance people, questions going off today at 5:30

hi Nick.


you know, you really should have posted this request on the one place that people care about this NTL HD box and content, that place and thread being the
"Where Is HDTV From ntl.....when?" thread from the current NTL/non TW, ex-C&W customers at cableforum.co.uk
http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/sh...=44778&page=13

just a few questions that should have been asked such as.
is this http://www.scientificatlanta.com/cus...ce/7009100.pdf
reference design box, the basis for the next NTL commissioned HD STB ?.

if yes, what options will be included as standard in such a box?, such as will it have the ability to both stream(tcp) and multicast(UDP) out to the ntl customers local network machines ?.

will it have the ability as standard to receave the NTL customers Mpeg2 and Mpeg4/AVC content stored on their PC harddrives for instance and display that content through the new STB directly on the connected TV/Monitor/projector ?.

will the new NTL box weather Mpeg2 or the far more advanced (and upcoming standard across the EU) mpeg-4/AVC, be using a far more stable firmware than the current boxs, and will he personally see to it that he asked the current 80% non TW/ex-C&W customer base what THEY actually want in their homes ,so as to help him understand his customers wishes and wants for the near future ?.

i invite him and indeed any of his executive team/board members to post on the http://www.cableforum.co.uk message board, and indeed encurage them to hang around and ask me and the other people to help him understand our wants and wishes.

will he personally see to ditching the cr@ppy Liberate Middleware for something far more advanced today (such as the realtime qnx rtp6+ and its far advanced photon GUI) for a far better based, future proof product that does what we want and perhaps far more besides.

is there an inhouse NTL coders/developers unit taking care of the many bugs in the current NTL liberate STB's or is it liberates creators responsability under contract
to clear them problems up for the end users ?.

that/whatever the case is, why havent these problem been addressed in all the time liberate middleware was used going back before NTL took over from C&W infact, why is that ?.

will he personally take an interest in giving the NTL userbase a far better interactive STB with greater potential (because of the cable return path/speed etc) than anything sky or other providers could manage so far, milk-it as it were?.

will the next NTL commissioned STB finally get a dedicated 2D/3D chip with dedicated ram so as to allow interactive gaming (and boost that liberate feedback even LOL) thats at least better than the current mobil phones 2D/3D chips they have had for many years now, its about time we got an STB that can play at least
amiga/st/playstation1 type gaming in this day and age of PC/PS3/PSP/xbox3 gaming, not to forget the interactive cable networking that ntl users could play against each other, becomeing a contender in the xbox live type markets in the near future..

this http://www.xgitech.com/products/products_2.asp?P=22 for instance might be good enough from the NTL boards POV, but it might be wise to get the next better product for longer term viability and dont forget a decent FPGA chip so you can put any updated codec into it when the need arrises in the future,
you might even place an emulator in there(or a second one) to run your commissioned/licenced games from,
Mark (Horley), just lookup my popper account and send me the check LOL.

a customised SoC PPC based STB might be a wise move today too.

dans (CEO of QNX at the time) RTP port of quake3 ran very nicely on an amd/Nvidia of its time for instance.

many many more questions could have been asked if you have just told us real NTL users over on the HD thread above, shame......................

perhaps you can do another one sometime soon as a folow up?.

sorry the questions kept coming, iv finally finished editing i think.

lol, laters.................

[Bob Crabtree]

We emailed Mark Horley a couple of days back asking why NTL won't be introducing HD until 2007?

He responded over the weekend saying,

The main reason why NTL customers won't see HD at the same time as Telewest customers is because the box that supports HD - the TVDrive box - will not be launching on the NTL side until end of 2006/early 2007.

There is a huge amount of work to be done to make sure that this box and the code that resides on it can interface with all the NTL back-end systems. As always when launching new products, we will be conducting exhaustive user testing to ensure that it is a good-quality customer experience.

Bob

[razzandy]

Hi All

I think NTL’s plans about the TVDrive for HD is totally worthless, its like there taking a step backwards! Why don’t they develop the new on demand service to incorporate HD content? Surely having a standard receiver without the 160GB PVR would be far cheaper and a far superior system to a PVR (Sky). PVR is old hat now, ON Demand is the feature!

Maybe you could forward this onto Mark Horley for his comments.

Cheers

[Bob Crabtree]

razzandy,

But doesn't the on-demand feature require you to have somewhere (ie a hard disk) onto which the chosen programs can be saved?

Bob

[popper]

razzandy,

But doesn't the on-demand feature require you to have somewhere (ie a hard disk) onto which the chosen programs can be saved?

Bob

well in the case of NTL (and i suspect others) no , as they will be unicasting any content you request on demand, that being send 1 copy per user per request, as apposed to the far more inovative muticasting content, as in sending one copy of the content to all current consumers requests at that time, that would be far better on the bandwidth, but would require the ISP/TV network to allow/switch multicasting on their network switches as standard (it is industry standard right now, but turned off on all but a few universitys and speciallist networks in the uk ), that ofcourse would then allow the NTL users to also take advantage of multicasting capabilitys and that would be far to advanced for NTL to allow its users that, at least until some other companys had been allowing that for 2 years at least

its suspected (by me at least) that NTL could/will be useing an industrial version of torrent servers and a intigrated DHT on their internal network keyed to the closed NTL VOD services they are gearing up for,to save their bandwidth and help them scale better, but AFAIK today there does not exist a multicasting version of the torrent server protocol.

see http://bamboo-dht.org/users-guide.html for an open java based DHT that also has
muticasting capabilitys http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG...ger-report.pdf

so to clarify:
no they dont need a local harddrive, (or multicasting ,or even the DHT as above), as they re-send it every time you ask for it.

but, if they did then they could potentially become a real inovating ISP and even use some of the (almost) always on client STB's storage in a multicasting, DHT enabled, closed torrent network wide system(theres that pesky Liberate problem though), that even the users could use to multicast stream their PS3 video content for instance, to the other NTL users anywere on the system, now that would be an inovation that no large ISP/company (in the world AFAIK)has done, but we are talking NTL the UK's largest combined cable tv/isp provider here.....

arrr what a wast of potential untaped UK inovation
copyright popper.

[nvening]

But NTL would want to control all content proberly, eta on the finished feature?

[ryggart]

Hi, can you ask Mark one last importnat question. Will they be using the MPEG-2 Explorer 8300 or the MPEG-4 Explorer 8450 for the launch of TVDrive to ntl customers. Thanks.