[CLUG] [OT and ranting] Chorus Digital

[Fergal Moran]

I got a notice from Chorus a couple of weeks ago telling me that digital had
arrived in my area - so I phoned them up immediately - they confirmed that
yes digital would be in my area and arranged an engineer to come on monday
morning - I took the morning off work and waited in until 1pm for an
engineer who never arrived - so I phoned Chorus who told me that there was
no appointment scheduled for me that morning - fantastic I though - so I
scheduled another one for Thursday morning and rang up on wednesday to
confirm - all was fine - Thursday - again no show - so I phoned them again -
furious at this stage - eventually after speaking to about 3 different
people of varying levels of intelligence - I was informed "Oh - sorry Mr
Moran - there is not actually a digital service available in your area until
after christmas".
Three name changes later and they are still as incompetent as the shoddy
little operation that installed "The BBC" in my mother house 20 years ago..

Oh well - Sky Digital for me for christmas then..
It's a pity really because all I want is a stereo signal..

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ronan Kirby [mailto:ronan at kirby.ie]
> Sent: 02 December 2000 18:16
> To: cork at linux.ie
> Subject: [CLUG] [OT] Chorus Digital
> 
> 
> Folks,
> 
> Sorry for the off topic post, but I thought this might interest some
> people:
> 
> Got Chorus Digital installed this morning. They use a Sagem ITD 4000
> digital decoder
> http://www.sagem.com/en/produits-en/terminaux-num-en/tv-itd4000-en.htm
> 
> It has about 106 channels, but once they programme your smart card you
> will obviously only have what you pay for. The quality etc you would
> expect, but it seems there are still a lot of outages due to 
> continuing
> roll out of the service.
> 
> The decoder has 2 scart sockets, one for your TV and one for 
> the Video.
> Its fairly limit in what you can do in it's menus, but all 
> the operator
> settings are there. There is an RS232 port on the back, but 
> I've yet to
> ascertain what can be done from there *grin*. There is also 
> an RJ11 port
> on the back, which is used to order Pay-Per-View events, and for the
> Internet service.
> 
> The Internet service is not "always on". From what I can tell it
> requests via the phone line, and sends back to you via the MMDS. I
> didn't get it myself, as it meant using Chorus for my phone 
> lines. Also,
> you can't use it for your PC / LAN, its TV Browsing only. But 
> seemingly
> they will have a fully bi-directional via MMDS phone service soon, at
> which point it will have a new decoder box, and possibly an interface
> for your PC.
> 
> TV wise its fine. The odd channel has a little pixelisation. 
> Full stereo
> sound etc (how refreshing!).
> 
> I'll send any more relevant info I find on the box, as I get it.
> 
> - Ronan
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Cork maillist  -  Cork at linux.ie
> http://www.linux.ie/mailman/listinfo/cork
>