Hi all,

I've seen this package on www.homechoice.co.uk for broadbrand, free calls, all the TV channels we want (really it's just E4 ) and i'm just wondering if anyone has heard anything regarding this company? We have just moved home and basically just want broadband and E4 and I am trying to find the cheapest option.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated

You could have a trawl through http://www.asdlguide.org.uk/ They have lots of user comments on isp and a forum.

I know Bulldog www.bulldogdsl.com had some nice offers including a phoneline.

R

Many thanks byfordr. I will have a look at both

They are offering the TV over a phone line, not via an aerial, dish, or cable, and it’s view-on-demand rather than a conventional broadcast system. The details given on the website are very sketchy, but there is a combined STB and broadband modem/router that downloads the programs and displays them on your TV.

But, it shares the 1Mbit/s bandwidth with your Internet connection, so surfing the web might be quite slow if someone was watching TV at the same time, and the compression required to get the video down a phone line would need to be quite aggressive, so you might want to check the quality of the TV pictures.

wow, that was extremely helpful! thank you phugoid!

Hi there

A few of my colleagues have HomeChoice service in their houses and they are more than happy with the service. It is a fairly new company (6 years) so you get the odd teething problem but all in all it's a great package and well worth the money.

If I lived in their serviceable area I would definitely have it. The cost is brilliant and they will install and support wireless for your internet service.

quote:

Originally posted by phugoid:
They are offering the TV over a phone line, not via an aerial, dish, or cable, and it’s view-on-demand rather than a conventional broadcast system. The details given on the website are very sketchy, but there is a combined STB and broadband modem/router that downloads the programs and displays them on your TV.

But, it shares the 1Mbit/s bandwidth with your Internet connection, so surfing the web might be quite slow if someone was watching TV at the same time, and the compression required to get the video down a phone line would need to be quite aggressive, so you might want to check the quality of the TV pictures.

I'm afraid you're not correct with your assumptions of how homechoice works. I can tell you as a HC subscriber HC do offer VOD but they also offer regular broadcast TV (BBC, ITV, C4, E4, MTV, etc.) as well as a replay service on BBC channels and C4 (although the content available for replay is limited, especially on C4). There is no download process it is all streamed direct from the HC servers.

Also the TV does not share the bandwidth with the internet connection, you can quite happily have upto 4MB broadband and the TV will still sit outside that range. Picture quality is very good on all broadcast channels, although some VOD content is a bit ropey (MPEG1) but the whole netword is currently being upgraded to MPEG4, the first channel on the new compression format went live about a week ago.

You can also get all the SKY Sports channels and some of the movie channels, but these come direct from SKY rather than HC and as such are a bit pricy - hope that helps.

MrB - Thanks for the input. I was interested in this because HC seemed to have come up with a new interactive TV platform that offered broadcast quality digital TV over a phone line. But the website was quite sketchy on the details, and as the bandwidth of a normal copper phone line is rather restricted, especially in comparison with that usually required for high quality TV pictures, it was worth looking at how they had done it.

Obviously, the shorter the distance to the exchange, the more DSL bandwidth is available, but then not everyone can be close, and a practical system would have to be workable with only a few Mbps of bandwidth, but, of course, a few (lucky) people would be able to get more. This total bandwidth would have to be shared between the TV service and the internet access, so the crucial questions are how the TV/internet allocation was managed and how well the video compression scheme works.

A dynamic allocation would be a reasonable assumption, with priority given to the TV to guarantee the picture quality, but I can see from what you have said, that the allocation must be a fixed one. I think I can see why they have done this, but it would have been nice to have the extra internet speed when the TV was off, and I suspect that the fixed arrangement might well limit you to streaming/downloading one TV channel at a time. However, it does appear that a 1,2,4Mbps service really means 1,2,4Mbps contended internet access, provided that you live close enough, and that the extra TV bandwidth is provided on top.

Agree that picture quality should be good with MPEG4 after the upgrade from MPEG2.

thanks MrB and kpnuts. i think we may just go for it

You will need to be quite close to the exchange/local switch – the HC website has a postcode availability checker for this.

where is the local switch? they have it in my area! is it only available in the london area?

To get HC you need to be close to a local (originally BT) exchange in which HC have installed their hardware (under new LLU rules), and I think this means only parts of London and Stevenage, but check with the postcode checker linked above.