Virgin Media Box: Class Act
 

On Tue, 08 Feb 2011 19:17:45 +0000, Bill Wright
wrote:

Peter Duncanson wrote:
On Tue, 08 Feb 2011 14:22:40 +0000, Mark Carver
wrote:

Ian Jackson wrote:

http://www.markyboy.net/vmbox2.jpg
Did you forget to turn on the flash? All I'm getting here is a blank
black screen ...

(The first one is still ok.)

The first time I looked at the photo, it was OK. Now its all dark.
However, the EXIF data says the flash did fire.
Indeed it did, but the camera's generally not that good. It does have a
really good mobile phone application though, and that does work very well.

Anyway, I'll take a shot in daylight tomorrow morning, and update the
gruesome picture.

I've put a processed version of that picture on my website
(temporarily):
http://www.peterduncanson.net/temp/vmbox2.jpg

You've made it worse by putting the whole tonal range into the middle.
The blacks are 46/256 above black and the whites are 188/256 above
black. Better to use the full tonal range and merely tweak the gamma to
increase midrange contrast.

Thank you for your review Bill.

It was just a quick adjustment. I've spent the last few weeks adjusting
photos of a gathering of family and friends that was outdoors under
trees and under gazebos with the sun shining (last year). The amount of
contrast was horrific. I eventually managed to get them all surprisingly
good. This has left me temporarily all image-adjusted-out.


--
Peter Duncanson
(in uk.tech.digital-tv)

Virgin Media Box: Class Act
 

I'd like to think that it was never anywhere near as bad as that image that George posted, it looks more like what one would
expect to find on the Indian subcontinent rather than the U.S.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11815200/cables1.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11815200/cables2.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11815200/cables3.jpg

Now *that's* what I call a network.

--
Graham.

%Profound_observation%

Virgin Media Box: Class Act
 

Graham. wrote:

The gloom could be considered a metaphor for the state of British engineering standards.


You think that's bad. Take a look at
http://www.wrightsaerials.tv/roguesgallery/152.shtml
for instance.

Bill

Virgin Media Box: Class Act
 

Peter Duncanson wrote:

You've made it worse by putting the whole tonal range into the middle.
The blacks are 46/256 above black and the whites are 188/256 above
black. Better to use the full tonal range and merely tweak the gamma to
increase midrange contrast.

Thank you for your review Bill.
In the words of Rangi Ram, "I was just being clever dickey!"


It was just a quick adjustment. I've spent the last few weeks adjusting
photos of a gathering of family and friends that was outdoors under
trees and under gazebos with the sun shining (last year). The amount of
contrast was horrific. I eventually managed to get them all surprisingly
good. This has left me temporarily all image-adjusted-out.
I'll tell you the most ridiculous thing. T snatched some pics using my
crappy old phone (got a better one now) of this woman and her dog, the
dog fawning on her knee. She was really keen to have the pictures,
saying that she would put one on her Christmas card. Trouble is, the dog
had so much red-eye it was actually white eye, spread right across its
face. As it happens my son has two similar dogs, same breed etc, so I
photoshopped one of his dogs' faces onto this woman's dog. It worked
well. It went on her Chrissy card anyhow.

It's terrible really, what you can get away with.

Bill

Virgin Media Box: Class Act
 

In article , trap
says...

"Terry Casey" wrote in message
...
Cable companies aren't allowed to use overhead distribution in the UK but
BT still can
and do ...

Virgin have been trialing it recently:
http://www.silicon.com/technology/ne...work-39745587/

Paul

Your eyes obviously read didfferent words to mine ...

"Cable ISP Virgin Media has announced it WILL trial fibre broadband delivered via
telegraph poles ..." (My emphasis)

But first, the rules will need to be amended ...

"The company noted that CHANGES TO PLANNING GUIDELINES WOULD BE NEEDED to enable large-
scale overhead fibre deployments ..." (My emphasis)


--

Terry

Virgin Media Box: Class Act
 

In article , "kraftee" says...

"Paulg0" wrote in message
...


"Terry Casey" wrote in message
...
Cable companies aren't allowed to use overhead distribution in the UK but
BT still can
and do ...

Virgin have been trialing it recently:
http://www.silicon.com/technology/ne...work-39745587/

Paul

Piloting it?????

It's already being done and has been for at least 10 years

By Virgin Media or, as you are going back before the inception of VM, one (or more) of
its constituents?

BT doesn't count, for the reason I gave earlier ...

--

Terry

Virgin Media Box: Class Act
 

In article , says...


Erm, I am confused. Maybe not in your area but here VM (formerly
NTL, formerly Bell Cablemedia (I think)) have fibre feed to the
street cab and a paralleled pair co-ax/four-pair to the house.
The co-ax carries TV and broadband, the pair carries telephone.


There are many ways of achieving the same objective and there are many different
influences in the history of CATV development but the overal pattern is loosely the same.

One fibre feed will typically supply TV and Broadband to an area of about 2,400 homes,
although granularity down to 600 home nodes has been used in some areas.

The fibre receiver/launch amplifier plus several splitters and ascociated cables (thick
ones!) and power supplies pretty much fill a standard sized street cabinet so there isn't
enough room for subscriber distribution in the same cabinet. There is always an exception
to the rule, as evidenced by the Magnavox Fibre in the Lid solution I mentioned in a
previous post but it is extremely rare. If you see two similar sized cabinets side by
side, it is often a pointer to the fibre/coax interface as the second cabinet will be for
subscriber distribution.

Telco Distribution is similar but needs much larger cabinets due to the amount of
electronics[1] needed to interface the fibre to copper and will typically serve around
600 homes so, depending on geography, etc., there will usually be 3 or 4 of them to each
CATV fibre node. Again, these cabinets don't feed subscribers directly. Instead,
multipair cables connect to the CATV cabinets for distribution of combined services to
individual customers.

This may be by siamese cable (coax and UTP in a figure-of-eight format) or individual
cables for each service may be pulled - the end result is the same.

[1] Telephony is fed on two fibre rings for reslience. At each cabinet, the data is
recovered from the fibre, data to/from the local area is extracted/added and the whole
lot converted back to light again, thus regenerating the signal. The cabinet also
contains battery back-up and cooling equipment.

--

Terry

Virgin Media Box: Class Act
 

In article , lid says...


My understanding certainly was that there was fibre to the cabinet, and
coax and/or UTP from there to the premises, depending.

No - see my reply to Woody's post.

Cambridge cable presentation (now Virgin via NTL) IIRC is /was pure
coax. With phones demuxed of that somehow. I think.


No. The fact that both services are fed from a single cabinet may give that illusion but
that is all it is: an illusion.

If you could see inside a cabinet before subscriber cables were added it would be easy to
see that the telephony distribution is physically and electrically separate. Once the
cabinet fills up, it is rather difficult!

--

Terry

Virgin Media Box: Class Act
 

On Wed, 09 Feb 2011 02:22:10 +0000, Bill Wright
wrote:

Peter Duncanson wrote:

You've made it worse by putting the whole tonal range into the middle.
The blacks are 46/256 above black and the whites are 188/256 above
black. Better to use the full tonal range and merely tweak the gamma to
increase midrange contrast.

Thank you for your review Bill.
In the words of Rangi Ram, "I was just being clever dickey!"

It's OK. I realised that.

--
Peter Duncanson
(in uk.tech.digital-tv)

Virgin Media Box: Class Act
 

In article , lid says...


Cambridge cable presentation (now Virgin via NTL) IIRC is /was pure
coax.



Ah! Missed this bit! It makes obvious sense to feed the local area on coax only
particularly if, as is the case in Cambridge, the headend is in a densely populated area.
Noise (and distortion) limits the extent to such coverage though, and I can assure you
that there is lot of fibre kit in the Cambridge headend!

So, unless you're in one of those narrow blocked off streets near the headend, you'll be
fed on hybrid fibre/copper (assuming you're a VM customer, that is!)

--

Terry