May 08, 2009
Virgin testing 7 new channels
Off EPG, Virgin currently have seven channels "testing" - VMTest1 -VMTest7. However, before anyone gets too excited it should be pointed out that they're showing standard definition test broadcasts rather than HD, so chance are they're for regular channels and the numbering is just a coincidence
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I reckon ITV HD will drop in before ITV2 on the EPG, Discovery seems to have an obvious slot reserved too. The big gaps around 166 to 200 could house FX type channels but I'm not sure where they'd sticj 4 HD. They shuffled out the gaps around E4 at the last update.
Nialli, how do you know (or, I should say, "how does one know") what Virgin are doing off-EPG? Are you feeding into a DVB-C card in your computer? This is a genuine question, by the way: contrary to some people's belief, doing so is NOT against VM's terms and conditions (I've read every last word of them); only attempting to receive pay channels without, er, paying is against T&Cs. If you do have some handy equipment, would you be able to tell me the bit rate that XFM is broadcast on on channel 965? I would really, really appreciate that! (I know it's off topic - sorry.) Cheers - Alan.
A VM engineer told me. I don't see it as necessarily significant with regards to new HD channels but it does show that they have spare capacity now. (Media Boy's reported over on Cable Forum too btw.)
XFM is 160kbps on Virgin (and satellite), which is better than the 128kbps it's subjected to on DAB. I'm not sure how up to date these numbers are but http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/dab/digital_radio_bit_rates.htm has a table of comparisons for the different radio bit rates.
Thanks for that super-quick response, Nialli! XFM does sound better on cable than on DAB, but the streams are suspiciously in absolutely perfect sync, which made me wonder if the cable feed was coming off DAB. I am very dubious, I have to say, about where some of Virgin's feeds come from. Absolute Classic Rock, in particular, sounds so dreadful on cable (and occasionally cuts out, as if buffering) that I suspect an internet stream, probably being resampled down analogue cables, just to make sure it sounds as terrible as possible... - Alan.
Unless VM have some sort of time machine, a stream pulled off of DAB and rebroadcast over the cable network would be slightly delayed. That they are in perfect sync is slightly odd, but definitely means that they're using some other feed.
Sam
More info on the tests here:
List of channels on Virgin TV - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
@Sam J: [re: "would be slightly delayed"] Not necessarily - if the mp2 stream was being pulled off DAB and not decoded, but placed directly onto the cable, then the only delay introduced would be in differences in decoding speed between my DAB radio and my Virgin set-top box. Hence my question about the bitrates, since if XFM on cable really is at 160kbs, and 128 on DAB, then you're right, DAB can't be the cable feed, since transcoding would always introduce a delay. (Besides, transcoding upwards from 128 to 160, using the mp2 codec in both cases, would be a stupid thing to do - but probably no more so than we'd expect from VM...)
Cheers - Alan.
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