AV2 challenge

You cable company is probably broadcasting in mono or the channel separation of the stereo signal is very poor. So no decoding or stearing is possible.

That's exactly what I was thinking....

It would be good if the AV2 displayed some kind of error instead of just flashing the display, showing the mode and settling in....which is the normal operation.

There's no indication there's something up with the signal.

Jay

Depending on the channel, prologic does NOT work properly on Teleworst (on my Yamaha E800 at least), and sometimes even when it does, the rears in particular have lots of digital crap like gurgles on them. Many channels do appear to be mono only too.

IF that cazy lunt of a Sky installer had bothered to do his job instead of taking one look and giving up, we'd not have had this problem...

Jay

I'm not too fimiliar with the AV2 so forgive me if this seems a stupid question I am an audiophile and don't normally post here. However I am an engineer for NTL who are soon to be taking over Telewest and I have an understanding of how the cable tv is broadcast.

Is it analogue cable TV or is it digital cable tv?

How are you connecting your Telewest to the AV2? (DIN - Phono)

Most digital cable tv signals are QAM encoded (quadrature amplitude modulation) and the stereo encoding should come straight from source (BBC, Sky, ITV CNN) therefor Telewest will not really interfere with them, only modulating several channels onto one QAM transport stream. Your digital cable box will therefor decode this QAM transport stream and decode the stereo signals. So if you have the digital cable box correctly connected to your AV2 then there could be a problem with your digital cable box. Telewest should look at this for you, possibly free of charge as unlike Sky you do not own the digital box and are renting the box from them, so they should come out and replace it if necessary.

Analogue cable tv is slightly different, most of the sources are received via satelite and then encoded on to a VHF/UHF modulator, if Telewest then decide that they want a particular channel to be broadcast in NICAM stereo then they will need to add a NICAM encoder, so if you have analogue cable tv and only having problems with a handful of analogue cable tv channels then this could be that they are not NICAM encoded, speak to Telewest and they should be able to tell you which channles are and which are not.

Hope this helps and it doesn't sound too scary.

Phil

Hi Phil

Great to hear from you. I'm not home and have guests tonight but I'm keen to answer your questions in detail.

Cheers
J

Hi Phil

Here we go.

quote:

Is it analogue cable TV or is it digital cable tv?

Well not sure. We have a Pace cable box. Does that help? I assumed it was digital?

quote:

How are you connecting your Telewest to the AV2? (DIN - Phono)

I needed a cable box with separate rca audio outs because the scart goes to a projector. So it's an rca (TW box) to rca (AV2) connection.

quote:

Most digital cable tv signals are QAM encoded (quadrature amplitude modulation) and the stereo encoding should come straight from source (BBC, Sky, ITV CNN) therefor Telewest will not really interfere with them, only modulating several channels onto one QAM transport stream. Your digital cable box will therefor decode this QAM transport stream and decode the stereo signals. So if you have the digital cable box correctly connected to your AV2 then there could be a problem with your digital cable box. Telewest should look at this for you, possibly free of charge as unlike Sky you do not own the digital box and are renting the box from them, so they should come out and replace it if necessary.

Analogue cable tv is slightly different, most of the sources are received via satelite and then encoded on to a VHF/UHF modulator, if Telewest then decide that they want a particular channel to be broadcast in NICAM stereo then they will need to add a NICAM encoder, so if you have analogue cable tv and only having problems with a handful of analogue cable tv channels then this could be that they are not NICAM encoded, speak to Telewest and they should be able to tell you which channles are and which are not.

So how can I tell whether I have digital or analogue TW?

Cheers
J

Jay

NTL and Sky both use Pace Digi boxes, I'm not sure about Telewest, although given a very good educated guess I would say you have Digital Cable TV
You will probably have the option of having 200+ TV channels, whereas analogue you will only receive approx. 60.

I also have an NTL Pace digi box, this is connected to a Panasonic(don't worry, I own a 112x, 150x, CD5x and Fltacap2) all in one DVD/5.1 Amplifier using the RCA left and right outputs.

I am getting sound from all 5 channels, so my diagnosis is that either you have a fault with your Digi box or your AV2 is not set up correctly. Another thing to try would be to switch the RCA leads from your Digi box to the RCA outputs of your TV (if this is possible)

I hope this helps.

Phil

Hi Phil

Thanks for the time you're taking here to reply!

quote:

NTL and Sky both use Pace Digi boxes, I'm not sure about Telewest, although given a very good educated guess I would say you have Digital Cable TV
You will probably have the option of having 200+ TV channels, whereas analogue you will only receive approx. 60.

We only subscrive to the standard and Sky Sports so not sure.

quote:

I am getting sound from all 5 channels, so my diagnosis is that either you have a fault with your Digi box or your AV2 is not set up correctly. Another thing to try would be to switch the RCA leads from your Digi box to the RCA outputs of your TV (if this is possible)

Not possible, I don't have a TV only a projector.

We had a bit of an issue when it was first installed because the box they bought with them didn't have RCA outs. You could only get sound off the scart, so not sure what that was about?

thanks again
Jay