[arefem]

The MK cable is still analogue. For the basic service you don't need a box, just connect your tv, to the wall socket, tune in as normal and away you go.

Now I've just helped two of my neighbours set up their tv's on the basic package, and they can get several more channels than I can.

I found one of the channels on my tv, it's down at the bottom end of the tuner, the others appear to be spread throught out the range of 22-68, however, I can't find them even if I fine tune through the whole UHF band.

I thought my neighbours might have dual standard tv (UHF & VHF), but that's not the case.

Any ideas why I can't get the extra channels?


Now for item 2

There's been a long running, unanswered question about the MK cable future. It's owned by BT and leased by VM. It is an unholy mix of copper, aluminium and fibre optic. Neither party is prepared to commit to upgrading it to all fibre optic in preparation for analogue switch off in 2011 (for our region).

Apparantly BBC 3 Counties got involved and VM said they intend to keep the cable as analogue, collecting the digital signal and converting to analogue before squirting it down the cable to analogue TV sets. SO MK could be in the unique position of people with digital tv's needing STB's to convert the analogue signal back to digital. Madness.

Another problem exists in that a few years back VM (then NTL) said the cable could not handle any more channels (The basic package is BBC1,2,News ITV Anglia and Central [or whatever they are called these days], CH4, Five, QVC and Hallmark [plus as I said some people get another six or so channels]), so presumably even when they do thier digital shuffle, we still won't get the additional free to air channels.

Right now I'm dithering between VM's cable package, Freesat from Sky, Freesat and Freeview. I'm trialling a Freeview box for Teletext Extra, so I'm committed to that for about a year, and to be honest there's not much I find of interest. The other free offerings don't look much better either.