VirginMedia giving up in central London 31.1.12. Advice appreciated...

[Nick Armstrong]

O Caliban! How could you!! - "I am loving it... " - too many (is it a burger? or a cola??) advoitisments -

In this country we still say " I love it... "

true, it's been hi-jacked by the burger-vendors ("I'm loving it").... but I don't think it's ungrammatical or verboten is it? In the right context, it's surely correct and old-school when describing a state of enjoying something, no?

"Clarissa darling, are you sure we're not imposing by staying for 6 weeks?"

"Not at all, mummy, I am loving having you here..."

I think it's more vulgar if followed by a noun ("Loving this weather, mate")

Non?

[BetweenTheStaves]

..... ("Loving this weather, mate")

....

You missed out the Innit! As in "Loving this weather, mate, innit"

[vinteuil]

Caliban - it is not standard English English, tho' it is regularly found in the English of the Indian sub-continent, from where it seems to have spread.
The progressive continuous tense is not normally used with verbs expressing feeling or having opinions: believe, know, love, hate.

I am knowing that you understand this really...

http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/im-loving-it-grammar.aspx

[scottycelt]

O Caliban! How could you!! - "I am loving it... " - too many (is it a burger? or a cola??) advoitisments -

In this country we still say " I love it... "

Don't get me started yet again ...

Interviewer on a British TV Channel (not BBC) only last week ...

'Do you think Italy is headed for a deefault soon or can its lawmakers introduce additional tough austerity measures and not simply kick the can down the road ... '

[nick_london]

Virgin Media

Ok, heres the situation........

From the 1970's Westminster,Barbican and Milton keynes and some place in Scotland had a state of the art Analogue Cable TV infrastructure installed to help with poor tv reception as well as provide TV in those towns because of the conservation rules, you are not allowed to have dishes and aerials from street view!

These cable networks were eventually merged in with BT after privatisation and then started offering pay-tv channels so the system became commercialised.

In 1994, Videotron was declined a Cable TV licence for Westminster as Westminster Cable Television already held a licence to do so, therefore it instead applied for a licence to supply telephone services, so it built a telephone network across Westminster, Videotron eventually became part of Cable and Wireless and then NTL

Now when NTL took over the cable franchises in Westminster,Barbican and Milton Keynes, BT stated that NTL(Virgin Media) must not under any circumstances offer its telephone service to people in Westminster. NTL eventually acquired the customer base of those BT franchises under a leasing agreement.

Now conservation rules prevent both, BT and Virgin Media from digging up the street to upgrade the television service and there is not enough broadband customers to keep the service commercially viable! As Virgin Media have to pay something in the millions to BT every year in rent.

The analogue tv service is so old that it is getting difficult to maintain a fault free service and the set top boxes made by Jerrald,Scientific Atlanta and General Instrument are no longer manufactured and support by the manufacturers ended a long time ago, in fact most of those companies have either been taking over now or gone out of business.

In Milton Keynes, the council has not objected to either company digging up, they just want Digital TV and Broadband for its residents. Therefore on the other hand, it is a commercial dispute caused by BT.

Unless the Digital TV service is rolled out, those franchises have to close as they simply can't afford just to supply 2,000 customers with £4 analogue TV and £20 broadband when the rent for the network is in the millions.


What you could do:

Ring Virgin Media and ask them to supply you Virgin Media National services down your BT telephone line.
Contact TalkTalk and ask them about TalkTalk TV formerly Tiscali TV and Homechoice, if you tell them your problem, they might let you sign up.

TalkTalk TV is the service formerly provided by Tiscali TV and Homechoice, it runs down BT telephone lines, an aerial is required for some channels, but you do get a few more channels than you would on Virgin Media's Analogue TV service.

By the way, do you still get JSTV hahaha that is a weird combination of channels on analogue tv!

[Nick Armstrong]

Ok, heres the situation........

From the 1970's Westminster,Barbican and Milton keynes and some place in Scotland had a state of the art Analogue Cable TV infrastructure installed to help with poor tv reception as well as provide TV in those towns because of the conservation rules, you are not allowed to have dishes and aerials from street view!

These cable networks were eventually merged in with BT after privatisation and then started offering pay-tv channels so the system became commercialised.

In 1994, Videotron was declined a Cable TV licence for Westminster as Westminster Cable Television already held a licence to do so, therefore it instead applied for a licence to supply telephone services, so it built a telephone network across Westminster, Videotron eventually became part of Cable and Wireless and then NTL

Now when NTL took over the cable franchises in Westminster,Barbican and Milton Keynes, BT stated that NTL(Virgin Media) must not under any circumstances offer its telephone service to people in Westminster. NTL eventually acquired the customer base of those BT franchises under a leasing agreement.

Now conservation rules prevent both, BT and Virgin Media from digging up the street to upgrade the television service and there is not enough broadband customers to keep the service commercially viable! As Virgin Media have to pay something in the millions to BT every year in rent.

The analogue tv service is so old that it is getting difficult to maintain a fault free service and the set top boxes made by Jerrald,Scientific Atlanta and General Instrument are no longer manufactured and support by the manufacturers ended a long time ago, in fact most of those companies have either been taking over now or gone out of business.

In Milton Keynes, the council has not objected to either company digging up, they just want Digital TV and Broadband for its residents. Therefore on the other hand, it is a commercial dispute caused by BT.

Unless the Digital TV service is rolled out, those franchises have to close as they simply can't afford just to supply 2,000 customers with £4 analogue TV and £20 broadband when the rent for the network is in the millions.


What you could do:

Ring Virgin Media and ask them to supply you Virgin Media National services down your BT telephone line.
Contact TalkTalk and ask them about TalkTalk TV formerly Tiscali TV and Homechoice, if you tell them your problem, they might let you sign up.

TalkTalk TV is the service formerly provided by Tiscali TV and Homechoice, it runs down BT telephone lines, an aerial is required for some channels, but you do get a few more channels than you would on Virgin Media's Analogue TV service.

By the way, do you still get JSTV hahaha that is a weird combination of channels on analogue tv!

Wow thanks!

I junked the Virgin TV service in the autumn and now get Freeview through a new aerial inc their HD channels which is suiting me just fine, I only wish I'd done it years ago.

The remaining issue is internet. I currently get a very consistent 31MBps through Virgin cable. When that stops, the best available is around 12 - 14MBps via the phone line - because for similar reasons presumably, Westminster is apparently not "slated" for any sort of "roll-out" (forgive the sales vernacular) of the 40MBps 'Infinity' service so expensively bruited by BT as being at the "heart of the Olympic city"....

[nick_london]

Sorry but Westminster and some parts of Camden like Holborn won't be seeing BT Infinity for a while, it is the conservation rules that restrict everything.

You should be able to use the TV and FM radio by plugging directly into the Cable socket and get 1 to 5 channels, let me know if this still works after 12th January! Because if it does, it means BT might be intending to use the Cable network in the future and may mean fibre internet.

[Nick Armstrong]

Sorry but Westminster and some parts of Camden like Holborn won't be seeing BT Infinity for a while, it is the conservation rules that restrict everything.

You should be able to use the TV and FM radio by plugging directly into the Cable socket and get 1 to 5 channels, let me know if this still works after 12th January! Because if it does, it means BT might be intending to use the Cable network in the future and may mean fibre internet.

You speak with such authority ... are you "in the know"??

If there is something coming down the cable socket, what would it be? Because what was awful about analogue Virgin cable tv was that it never filled the whole widescreen. It was coming through 4:3 and there was nothing they could do about it. I got used to seeing everything in 14:9 zoom with the top and bottom cut off. The sheer pleasure now of having my 52" screen full of natural (esp HD) image is enormous.

After 12 January, what might I find if I hooked up to the cable socket once more?

[nick_london]

BBC1,BBC2,ITV1,Channel 4 and possibly channel 5 plus a barker channel

I'm just over the border in Camden and lucky to have all 3 Virgin Media services as it is owned by Virgin Media formerly Cable London/Telewest.

I cannot have a dish or aerial, the council put in this communal aerial and satellite system, but it keeps going down.

But out of curiousity, when they switched off Virgin Media's analogue tv off round here, months later the normal 5 channels remained when tuning in like you would off an aerial.

Even after digital switchover, people in milton keynes are still able to use Virgin Media analogue because they are digital channels and Virgin or BT rebroadcast them down as analogue.

I'm not much in the know, just knew a lot of people who had that poor service and i've always had cable so understand how all them analogue services work.

To be honest I miss the Analogue days, less +1 channels and nonsense and no flashy and technical mini guide telling you whats on now and whats on next.

You're right about the screen being funny, think one of the main reasons was because the orginal broadcasters of the channels stopped the analogue version and virgin or BT had to rebroadcast them as analogue so in theory, second hand tv channels haha.

Not being funny, but it's 2011 and BT is still supplying Virgin Media and its customers a cable service that has not been modified since it was built in the mid 70's, shows how up to date BT is!

The reason BT had to sell the cable franchises off in the first place was because they bought a share in BskyB in the late 90's and the European government forced BT to sell them off as they thought it would interfere with competition, however rather than worrying about commercial stuff, the European government failed to think about the local community and the fact that Westminster Cable TV was also a communal TV reception service not just a pay tv service. Many people will have problems watching TV now that the service is ending.

Since BT no longer has a share in BskyB, i'm sure BT can modernise the cable franchises somehow and run them again as there own unless they are willing to help Virgin Media do so!

[Nick Armstrong]

Not being funny but it's 2011 and BT is still supplying Virgin Media and its customers a cable service that has not been modified since it was built in the mid 70's, shows how up to date BT is!

Not funny at all ! You're dead right.

The only reason to is that it's so ridiculous!

[nick_london]

The channels you get on that thing is weird as well, JSTV! hahahaha and most of the channels go off after a certain time as well, oh yeah, there is something called topuptv and connects to your aerial, its pay tv without a contract, only thing is, the channels run in shifts just like analogue so becareful of it, as you become familiar with freeview, you might see barker channels advertising topuptv

[scottycelt]

... the European government forced BT to sell them off ... the European government failed to think about the local community ...

When was that then? ... maybe you simply read it in The Daily Mail sometime around the year 2050 ... ?

[nick_london]

competition

Actually it is common knowledge to most people who are stuck in those cable franchises, BT was forced to sell them, Bidders included Microsoft,Telewest,NTL and Cable and Wireless in 1999. Telewest and NTL as you know are now one company trading as Virgin Media and Cable and Wireless sold it's residential sector to NTL in 2000.

Competition rules of the European government will not permit companies to do that as they saw it as BT operating both satellite and cable services and thought it would be a threat to competition, the same year, they also forced Vodafone to sell off any interests it had in Orange, Mannesman a german network operator acquired Orange in the late 90's from Hutchison, mannesman was then acquired by Vodafone so indirectly, Vodafone owned orange for a short while, they threatened the company that they would not receive 3G licences until they sell off Orange, that is when France Telecom snapped it up.