Cable Forum - View Single Post - Sky vs Virgin

weegiegeek · 15-05-2013, 21:43

VM have plenty of room for channels. Moving to MPEG4 would be costly (replacing boxes, and I'm pretty sure feeds are delivered to VM as MPEG2, so there'd need to be encoding kit), and would only give an advantage in terms of being able to record more onto the TIVO, which is easily solved by offering bigger hard drives to those who want them, for a price.

Edit: it's also not quite the case that a Sky box can only record one thing per cable. Each cable connects to an LNB. Each LNB can only tune to horizontal or vertical, and each of those is split into high and low frequencies. So if you had a box with a dozen tuners, it'd only need 4 cables. The LNBs used for distributing Sky signals throughout a building/block of flats are usually Quattro LNBs, so you can run 4 cables to distribution equipment in the attic, and then run more or less as many cables to as many boxes as you like.

A quattro LNB differs from a Quad LNB in that it has four LNBs, each for one of the 4 tuning states. H/High, H/Low, V/High and V/Low. They NEED distribution kit like multiswitches.

A Quad LNB has 4 LNBs each capable of switching to any of the four states. Quad LNBs are what are installed in single-property residential installs.

Edit 2: And it's technically possible for a satellite tuner to record multiple channels per tuner, if they're all on the same mux.

15-05-2013, 21:43	#23
weegiegeek Inactive Join Date: Apr 2013 Posts: 176	Re: Sky vs Virgin - Futureproofing.. VM have plenty of room for channels. Moving to MPEG4 would be costly (replacing boxes, and I'm pretty sure feeds are delivered to VM as MPEG2, so there'd need to be encoding kit), and would only give an advantage in terms of being able to record more onto the TIVO, which is easily solved by offering bigger hard drives to those who want them, for a price. Edit: it's also not quite the case that a Sky box can only record one thing per cable. Each cable connects to an LNB. Each LNB can only tune to horizontal or vertical, and each of those is split into high and low frequencies. So if you had a box with a dozen tuners, it'd only need 4 cables. The LNBs used for distributing Sky signals throughout a building/block of flats are usually Quattro LNBs, so you can run 4 cables to distribution equipment in the attic, and then run more or less as many cables to as many boxes as you like. A quattro LNB differs from a Quad LNB in that it has four LNBs, each for one of the 4 tuning states. H/High, H/Low, V/High and V/Low. They NEED distribution kit like multiswitches. A Quad LNB has 4 LNBs each capable of switching to any of the four states. Quad LNBs are what are installed in single-property residential installs. Edit 2: And it's technically possible for a satellite tuner to record multiple channels per tuner, if they're all on the same mux.