to the forum.
The single cable comes down your drive and attaches to a box on the outside wall of your house. The various services you take from NTL branch off from this box. Cables emanating from this box on my former house terminated in three boxes on inside walls - one of them a phone socket, and two for broadband or TV.
A STB is a Set Top Box - coaxial cable is attached to the wall box inside your house, then to the STB, and the STB is attached to your telly. The STB decodes the TV transmissions that come down the cable. You leave your TV tuned into the same channel at all times, and change channels on the STB in order to watch the various channels NTL provides.