[TelstraClear] Core TV upgrade and picture improvement update

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#113804 29-Feb-2008 16:03

You get the 16:9/4:3 switching a lot on TV1/2 via TCL, I have noticed it happens a lot, however we can blame TVNZ for this as TCL are just taking a raw digital feed, but I would assume that TVNZ for whatever reason don't provide a consistant 720x576 feed in widescreen and pillarbox the 4:3 content for TCL...

cyril7

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#113805 29-Feb-2008 16:05

I would assume TCL just take the FreeView feed, which is locked in 16:9.

Cyril

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#113809 29-Feb-2008 16:20

What I suspect is that TC have not locked their equipment to 16:9 and for some reason it is sometimes for a moment switching it to 4:3 then switching it back.

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#113840 29-Feb-2008 19:22

I know that TCL take their feed directly from TVNZ, since Freeview off the Satellite has "Auckland" adds. Whereas the feed that turns up in wellington has the Wellington adds, and the TCL Cable in CHCH has the Christchurch adds. They have different PID's in Wellington and chch for TV1&2 due to running the different feeds from TVNZ.

sjadd

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#114321 3-Mar-2008 12:59

Sorry if this has been mentioned, but does TC receive Sky's channels before or after Sky has compressed them?

cyril7

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#114326 3-Mar-2008 13:29

Before the currently discussed upgrades, TCL had a bank of Sky decoders connected via composite connections to their own digital encoders, hence two low bit rate encodes are concatenated, not good.

Currently TCL is preforming an upgrade that sees the transmissions from Sky streamed from the inbound DVB Transport streams, decypted from their NDS encryption and reencrypted with Irdeto encryption, therefore the mpeg streams are the very same as transmitted by Sky.

Eitherway TCL dont have access to the channels before compression and distribution to all Sky subscribers on D1, however in the latter upgrade situation at least TCL are not adding another low bitrate coding event. As mentioned I suspect TCL is taking the FreeView transmissions or TV1,2,3,C4 rather than the Sky ones, but TCL would no better.

Cyril

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#114328 3-Mar-2008 13:35

After. It's like TCL is just another Sky Subscriber in "Sky" terms, they just rebroadcast it under an agreement (from my understanding). They just have a smartcard per channel and take what comes off the Satellite, and either re-encode it (using their old Composite boxes) or decrypt and re-encrypt without changing the digital content. Since Sky's broadcast from Auckland, and TCL are in Wellington (Seaview) and in Christchurch. TCL would need to dedicate bandwidth from Auckland to Wellington to get better quality TV to TCL Cable subs. There wouldn't be much point since TCL don't offer STB's with Component out so you wouldn't see that much of a PQ improvement anyway :)

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Davos

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#114984 6-Mar-2008 09:44

TelstraClear: Hi

Due to the large number of change requests across the HFC network this week and the complicated nature of this Core Upgrade, we must delay the quality and channel ungrade to the early hours of Wednesday morning, 5th March.

The picture improvements will take precedent and at a date to be advised we will add the remaining new channels.

I will update this forum within the next 10 days.

Regards

Jeff Doyle
Market Manager - InHome Services

Well the 5th has come and gone. And I'm still watching Sky Sport VHS...

Davos

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#118552 25-Mar-2008 14:42

Well apart from TV1 and TV2 (which have a marked improvement IMHO) this has all gone rather quiet.

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#118558 25-Mar-2008 15:04

And still no Alt-TV + Cheese + PQ improvments on Playhouse Disney and other existing sky channels.

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#118561 25-Mar-2008 15:13

It's still very much work in progress.

Davos

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#118584 25-Mar-2008 16:45

Indeed. Since October last year.

TelstraClear

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#122026 8-Apr-2008 09:34

Hi

Firstly my apologises for not confirming the status of this project on the proposed date. The complexity of the migration, Easter IS Brown Out and staff availability all affected the timing and I had no confirmed date to give this forum. Given the obvious impact on customers, we needed to be sure there would be no down time.

This project is the first implementation of its kind in New Zealand, in that no other broadcaster has a full ingest, multiplexing, edge QAM all in IP.

In the early hours of Thursday 10th April all major customer facing work will be completed and picture quality improvements added to the channels below. TelstraClear will not be re-encoding any content it receives from this point on. Further bug fixes and addition of STB features will happen progressively over the next 3 months. This work will put TelstrClear firmly on a path to deliver customers the next generation of services as they become available.

Picture improvement delivered to these channels:

SKY Movies

Movie Greats

Trackside

MGM

SKY Sport 2

Rugby Channel

The Living Channel

UKTV

The BPX

SKY Sport 1

Food TV

New Channels added:

Channel        Channel number        Package

Triangle TV        51                    Basic/start up ( will be live a few days after 10th)
ALT TV                65                    Available with a tier
Shine TV             111                    Available with a tier
CCTV 9               310                    Available with a tier
The Cheese        511                     Basic/start up
Te Reo                59                     Basic/start up

Regards

Jeff Doyle
Market Manager -- InHome Services

TomAckroyd

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#122074 8-Apr-2008 12:24

Jeff - thanks for this. It's good to have a final wrap-up to this thread! I am loving the way TV1, 2 and 3 look now on TCL.

I'm still concerned about Prime, though. I notice it's not on your list. Has there already been an PQ upgrade to this channel? It still looks quite poor - noisy, blocking artefacts, scaling artefacts. If that's what SKY are feeding you then there's nothing you can do, but would appreciate any light you can shed.

Cheers,
Tom

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#122899 11-Apr-2008 17:09

The Cheese is now live on Channel 511!

Hurray! :)

Check out my LPFM Radio Station at www.thecheese.co.nz - Now on iHeart Radio, TuneIn and Radio Garden

As per the usual std disclaimer.. "All thoughts typed here are my own."

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