SE
Yeah, I guess they had a bunch of old/refurb boxes, I've wondered how they went about that though, I have some boxes here which have newer logos than they should have. One, for example, is a Virgin box (according to the front face logo) but the underside had a stack of serial number/spec stickers on the bottom, the topmost of which was unbranded, but the numerous ones underneath it have NTL logos. I'm not entirely sure why they decided they needed to keep replacing that sticker as nothing much about it seemed to differ between the extra stickers they put over the top of the first, except the last one not having an NTL logo.
I feel like I may have heard something about there being a yellow card at some point, but nothing more about it, something I must've read on a forum somewhere. I assume they must still be out there, somewhere, even if there's only a few of them, but I've never even seen a picture.
Cheers! I'm not using TSDuck at the moment as I had some issues trying to get it installed, I'm using OpenCaster at the moment, but I hear TSDuck is better so if I have any issues I might go back to trying to install it. Thanks for the suggestion though, it's a handy second option if I get stuck. I am using ffmpeg for video encoding although I'm not doing live video right now, I'm just generating a TS that broadcasts over an over in a loop. That does have some minor issues, like the clock never changes, it's perpetually 5pm on Friday 14th August, but the boxes don't seem to mind and it gives me a non-moving target to write the EPG data for.
The thing with Sky isn't so much the actual data as the data rate. Because their boxes will only accept two (quite high) symbols/second it requires a higher spec radio. I do have such a radio but it's a bit awkward to use as it's miniPCIe so I can't easily connect it to my transmission virtual machine. I can use it in a laptop but the best laptop I have that it'll go in is pretty old so data rates are an issue, I can use it in my desktop (via an adapter) but that requires booting natively into Linux. So it's doable but much less convenient. I might be able to stretch the USB radio I have far enough out of spec to just about manage to satisfy a Digibox's symbol rate requirements, but I'm not confident it'll manage it as it's limited by USB 2.0 bandwidth. If they hadn't had the Digibox firmware restricted to two specific and quite high symbol rates then it would've been much easier, I could've done it the same as analogue/ONdigital/this cable stuff.
Yeah, the Telewest/C&W thing would tally with what I thought I'd heard in the past, so I guess that makes sense. It's kinda handy in a way though as it means a lot of the old network ID/region lists specify whether a region was pure NTL, ex-Telewest, or ex-C&W. Not that I've yet written down which of my boxes are which type, but it might be useful to know in future. Incidentally, several boxes have the net ID "99999" which I gather means they've been reset at some point, it seems to work if I target my transmissions for net ID 99999 so it's a literal ID and not just a non-functional placeholder, does make it difficult (impossible?) to establish exactly where they came from though.
(Edit: Not necessarily impossible to narrow down where they might have come from as the firmware versions, in particular the newer (Virgin) ones, seem to have stuff like BROM or KNOW in them, so it's fairly obvious which bit of the network they were probably intended to be used on.)
The boxes as far as I can see (not yet having done any investigative digging) do seem to be very similar across the board, they're all similarly styled, I believe most of them use very similar internals architecturally (other than the modems, as you mention). One of my boxes is more modern than the rest and it has a newer engineering menu, not like the blue screenshots I've posted above, but a sort of pastel purple menu, which is what I saw on the Samsung box I used to have. Given that, I assume they were all either based heavily on the same code, regardless of manufacturer, or almost identical other than some minor manufacturer-specific tweaks. Sky, in comparison, seems to have more diversity in the underlying architectural stuff, it doesn't seem to matter what they run underneath as long as the Sky EPG can sit on top of OpenTV. Since there's no equivalent to engineering mode on a Sky box though it's a bit difficult to compare in the same way you can on the cable boxes, there's no obvious signs of a UI or anything that don't involve booting into the EPG, which looks identical on all boxes regardless of what's underneath (as is the ideal point of middleware, of course).
I don't know much about the differences between DAVIC and DOCSIS, it's not something I've looked much into yet, but thankfully it seems not to have any bearing on the DVB-C portion of their functionality. As I hinted at earlier in the thread, it would be neat to be able to get that functionality up and running too, but it's a bit beyond me at the moment and I think it would require a more complex radio setup as it'll need to operate on multiple frequencies and in presumably in duplex. Does make sense that they would've had to have kept both systems running for customers though, unless they were going to replace all the set top boxes of a given system type, which I suppose they've kinda done now that they've consolidated things and no longer support these old boxes. I guess it was bound to happen eventually, even if it took an entire new communications standard. Not sure what the current system uses though, I assume DOCSIS, as that's more widely used? They operate from Bromley and Knowlsey now, right? Those would've been the C&W and Telewest headends according to Wikipedia, so those would be the DOCSIS systems? Must've been pretty awkward before the integration though, operating two different networks like that, it's funny you mention the channel numbers not even being the same, that seems like a relatively simple thing to fix.
The boxes all seem to respond to the signal I'm currently generating in some way or another, such as being able to get the current time via the TDT packets, but not necessarily the channel names and stuff like that. So it seems the very basics of "here is a DVB-C transmission with your network ID" as pretty universal at least, but not necessarily the position and format of some of the data in it. I'm unsure at the moment whether that's an architectural difference or whether some are just more tolerant than others in the sense that they'll fall back to getting data from another portion of the stream or more generously interpret data that isn't quite what it should be.
Good bit of history though, thanks for that.
Here’s a random one for you, we had NTL Digital installed in December 2000 (we had Analogue with them and C&W and NYNEX prior) and were provided with an NTL branded Pace 1000 box with NTL card. A year later we got a second box installed in my bedroom, same Pace box but branded Cable & Wireless with a C&W viewing card. Whilst I don’t have any photographic evidence all I remember was the card was yellow, and had the white d in a blue circle logo they were using for Digital. The set up/boot screens also had the C&W logo instead of NTL’s.
Yeah, I guess they had a bunch of old/refurb boxes, I've wondered how they went about that though, I have some boxes here which have newer logos than they should have. One, for example, is a Virgin box (according to the front face logo) but the underside had a stack of serial number/spec stickers on the bottom, the topmost of which was unbranded, but the numerous ones underneath it have NTL logos. I'm not entirely sure why they decided they needed to keep replacing that sticker as nothing much about it seemed to differ between the extra stickers they put over the top of the first, except the last one not having an NTL logo.
I feel like I may have heard something about there being a yellow card at some point, but nothing more about it, something I must've read on a forum somewhere. I assume they must still be out there, somewhere, even if there's only a few of them, but I've never even seen a picture.
As others I'm really enjoying seeing the work going in to bringing these old boxes come to life, and I applaud you on your work so far.
It just so happens DVB coding is something I know a lot about, so I might be able to help, not that I know anything about the cable network.
You may already be using it, but if you haven't found it TSDuck is an excellent tool for building and manipulating DVB transport streams. Combined with FFmpeg to encode video you should be able to generate a TS stream in real time with it, which you could feed to the boxes with live video and all the additional data required. You could even receive a TS stream from DTT or satellite, and rewrap it to feed in to the boxes.
As a side note, but I mention it as it's in your first post, you say Sky is quite tricky but in theory it shouldn't be. It should receive any standard DVB-S multiplex which you could tune in via 'Other Channels'. Making channels appear on the EPG is harder as they don't use EIT, but the Sky EPG has been reverse engineered and is used in projects such as TVHeadend to receive the channel lineup and TV guide, so it should be possible to work out how to transmit the EPG from that.
It just so happens DVB coding is something I know a lot about, so I might be able to help, not that I know anything about the cable network.
You may already be using it, but if you haven't found it TSDuck is an excellent tool for building and manipulating DVB transport streams. Combined with FFmpeg to encode video you should be able to generate a TS stream in real time with it, which you could feed to the boxes with live video and all the additional data required. You could even receive a TS stream from DTT or satellite, and rewrap it to feed in to the boxes.
As a side note, but I mention it as it's in your first post, you say Sky is quite tricky but in theory it shouldn't be. It should receive any standard DVB-S multiplex which you could tune in via 'Other Channels'. Making channels appear on the EPG is harder as they don't use EIT, but the Sky EPG has been reverse engineered and is used in projects such as TVHeadend to receive the channel lineup and TV guide, so it should be possible to work out how to transmit the EPG from that.
Cheers! I'm not using TSDuck at the moment as I had some issues trying to get it installed, I'm using OpenCaster at the moment, but I hear TSDuck is better so if I have any issues I might go back to trying to install it. Thanks for the suggestion though, it's a handy second option if I get stuck. I am using ffmpeg for video encoding although I'm not doing live video right now, I'm just generating a TS that broadcasts over an over in a loop. That does have some minor issues, like the clock never changes, it's perpetually 5pm on Friday 14th August, but the boxes don't seem to mind and it gives me a non-moving target to write the EPG data for.
The thing with Sky isn't so much the actual data as the data rate. Because their boxes will only accept two (quite high) symbols/second it requires a higher spec radio. I do have such a radio but it's a bit awkward to use as it's miniPCIe so I can't easily connect it to my transmission virtual machine. I can use it in a laptop but the best laptop I have that it'll go in is pretty old so data rates are an issue, I can use it in my desktop (via an adapter) but that requires booting natively into Linux. So it's doable but much less convenient. I might be able to stretch the USB radio I have far enough out of spec to just about manage to satisfy a Digibox's symbol rate requirements, but I'm not confident it'll manage it as it's limited by USB 2.0 bandwidth. If they hadn't had the Digibox firmware restricted to two specific and quite high symbol rates then it would've been much easier, I could've done it the same as analogue/ONdigital/this cable stuff.
Here are a few more random recollections based on the last few posts.
Cable and Wireless and ntl built their networks separately from each other, so ended up with very different technology. I recall someone mentioning that Telewest hired the same consultants that Cable and Wireless used and asked them to help them build an identical digital TV network as they were expecting to eventually get taken over by Cable and Wireless.
--snip--
I believe that all three networks used boxes from Pace that were very similar, but had some differences, so there were some subtle variations in the model numbers of the boxes.
--snip--
I believe that the engineering menus on all of the boxes are incredibly similar across all of the different models. Even the TiVo boxes have the same style of engineering menu that's accessed in the same way, it's just the V6 boxes that don't
--snip--
Not long after the merger they carried out a major upgrade of the head ends (in a project called Next Generation TV) which saw a single super head end feeding the entire network, rather than having separate networks for the three legacy companies, although some technical differences remain.
--snip--
The rapid changes that have happened to the network in recent years have mostly been due to the older boxes being removed. Whilst I can appreciate the technical nostalgia of getting the boxes to work, especially the ones running software from before the Virgin Media era, they were clearly holding back other technical advancements on the network. I think that all of the digital TV platforms have had problems with having to remain compatible with the oldest and least capable box that is still in use, so it been interesting to see Virgin Media being able to make some big changes (such as channels going HD only and switching SD channels to MPED4) since these older boxes have been removed.
Cable and Wireless and ntl built their networks separately from each other, so ended up with very different technology. I recall someone mentioning that Telewest hired the same consultants that Cable and Wireless used and asked them to help them build an identical digital TV network as they were expecting to eventually get taken over by Cable and Wireless.
--snip--
I believe that all three networks used boxes from Pace that were very similar, but had some differences, so there were some subtle variations in the model numbers of the boxes.
--snip--
I believe that the engineering menus on all of the boxes are incredibly similar across all of the different models. Even the TiVo boxes have the same style of engineering menu that's accessed in the same way, it's just the V6 boxes that don't
--snip--
Not long after the merger they carried out a major upgrade of the head ends (in a project called Next Generation TV) which saw a single super head end feeding the entire network, rather than having separate networks for the three legacy companies, although some technical differences remain.
--snip--
The rapid changes that have happened to the network in recent years have mostly been due to the older boxes being removed. Whilst I can appreciate the technical nostalgia of getting the boxes to work, especially the ones running software from before the Virgin Media era, they were clearly holding back other technical advancements on the network. I think that all of the digital TV platforms have had problems with having to remain compatible with the oldest and least capable box that is still in use, so it been interesting to see Virgin Media being able to make some big changes (such as channels going HD only and switching SD channels to MPED4) since these older boxes have been removed.
Yeah, the Telewest/C&W thing would tally with what I thought I'd heard in the past, so I guess that makes sense. It's kinda handy in a way though as it means a lot of the old network ID/region lists specify whether a region was pure NTL, ex-Telewest, or ex-C&W. Not that I've yet written down which of my boxes are which type, but it might be useful to know in future. Incidentally, several boxes have the net ID "99999" which I gather means they've been reset at some point, it seems to work if I target my transmissions for net ID 99999 so it's a literal ID and not just a non-functional placeholder, does make it difficult (impossible?) to establish exactly where they came from though.
(Edit: Not necessarily impossible to narrow down where they might have come from as the firmware versions, in particular the newer (Virgin) ones, seem to have stuff like BROM or KNOW in them, so it's fairly obvious which bit of the network they were probably intended to be used on.)
The boxes as far as I can see (not yet having done any investigative digging) do seem to be very similar across the board, they're all similarly styled, I believe most of them use very similar internals architecturally (other than the modems, as you mention). One of my boxes is more modern than the rest and it has a newer engineering menu, not like the blue screenshots I've posted above, but a sort of pastel purple menu, which is what I saw on the Samsung box I used to have. Given that, I assume they were all either based heavily on the same code, regardless of manufacturer, or almost identical other than some minor manufacturer-specific tweaks. Sky, in comparison, seems to have more diversity in the underlying architectural stuff, it doesn't seem to matter what they run underneath as long as the Sky EPG can sit on top of OpenTV. Since there's no equivalent to engineering mode on a Sky box though it's a bit difficult to compare in the same way you can on the cable boxes, there's no obvious signs of a UI or anything that don't involve booting into the EPG, which looks identical on all boxes regardless of what's underneath (as is the ideal point of middleware, of course).
I don't know much about the differences between DAVIC and DOCSIS, it's not something I've looked much into yet, but thankfully it seems not to have any bearing on the DVB-C portion of their functionality. As I hinted at earlier in the thread, it would be neat to be able to get that functionality up and running too, but it's a bit beyond me at the moment and I think it would require a more complex radio setup as it'll need to operate on multiple frequencies and in presumably in duplex. Does make sense that they would've had to have kept both systems running for customers though, unless they were going to replace all the set top boxes of a given system type, which I suppose they've kinda done now that they've consolidated things and no longer support these old boxes. I guess it was bound to happen eventually, even if it took an entire new communications standard. Not sure what the current system uses though, I assume DOCSIS, as that's more widely used? They operate from Bromley and Knowlsey now, right? Those would've been the C&W and Telewest headends according to Wikipedia, so those would be the DOCSIS systems? Must've been pretty awkward before the integration though, operating two different networks like that, it's funny you mention the channel numbers not even being the same, that seems like a relatively simple thing to fix.
The boxes all seem to respond to the signal I'm currently generating in some way or another, such as being able to get the current time via the TDT packets, but not necessarily the channel names and stuff like that. So it seems the very basics of "here is a DVB-C transmission with your network ID" as pretty universal at least, but not necessarily the position and format of some of the data in it. I'm unsure at the moment whether that's an architectural difference or whether some are just more tolerant than others in the sense that they'll fall back to getting data from another portion of the stream or more generously interpret data that isn't quite what it should be.
Good bit of history though, thanks for that.
Last edited by settopboxing on 16 August 2020 2:24pm
