TalkTalk's YouView: Why no Wi-Fi?

Isn't TalkTalk a Huawei box now?

Note to service providers - do learn from recent moves by some that if i can browse your catalogue before I pay I am more likely to pay. Odd that.

Note to content providers - if you only licence old series and old content then you drive away people once you have them on a legal platform. Own goal there really. I've seen series one of something I've not seen or heard of before - now lets look for series 2,3,4 somewhere else.

Here you go: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Link-TL-WR702N-150Mbps-Wireless-Router/dp/B006PYGWG6

" 11 million homes are now passed by its BT Infinity Fiber To The Curb (FTTC) offering speeds up to 80 Mbps."

Fiber? Curb? Did we suddenly move to the US?

FTTC = Fibre To The CABINET surely?

Sad to see a tech writer that cant get these simple spellings and common acronyms right.

Wi-Fi is flakey

I think people are failing to consider why Wi-Fi may not be supported yet.

Do we need a brief lesson in Wifi?

So the most common is 801.g 54Mb. That 54Mb isn't per connected device, it's shared across all connected devices. It's a half-duplex medium also meaning you can half that figure straight away. The highest rate any one device can achieve in the real world is around 20Mb. And that's assuming that Wifi is 100% clean and not also being shared with your Xbox, PC, Tablet, Smartphone etc for any serious use at the same time.

Now remember there are only 3 non-overlapping WiFi channels, yet in my street that are about 8 AP's in range. Every other AP on the same channel as mine eats into that shared 54mb of radio space even more. And that's without even considering high error correction overheads to co-exist in the same space as others.

Sure 20Mb is going to be fine for standard def streaming, but it's getting close for HD. WiFi is inherently an un-assured technology and subject to all kinds of operating conditions and interference.

It's well known that in the age of 40mb and 80Mb FTTC broadband, 802.1g 54Mb Wifi is now a bottleneck.

None of these issues occur on a 100Mb piece of Ethernet cable connected to a full duplex switch port.

Based on that, it occurs to me that YouView do not yet wish to risk having their brand tarnished by floods of support calls about chopping and buffering video etc because the end user has a poor WiFi setup. Even if they sent an engineer out to optimise everything, there is nothing to stop a neighbour standing up a new AP the very next day on the same channel wiping out that finely tuned setup.

As for Wireless N-150 or N-300 these are indeed a solution. Unfortunately for me I upgraded my router and several devices to Wireless N last year and for the life in me I cannot get anything to connect above 54Mb. I'm not sure if it's due to vendor mix of not quite standards compliant devices or that it's because I'm using the 2.4Ghz Wireless N so presumably there is simply not enough channel space left in there after all the other AP's in the neighbourhood have taken their slice.

Or, I as tried in vain to explain to my employer about 10 years ago when they started rolling out WiFi as some kind of utopia, you cannot guaranete thin air, and without very expensive tools you can't troubleshoot it either.

Some corrections needed

Talktalk's Plus TV package is £29.00 per month. If you pay the line rental upfront for £114, you then pay the equivilent line rental of only £9.50 per month - making the package the equivilent of £19.50 per month.

BT's £10.75 line rental is the same although you pay more upfront, naturally.

WiFi isn't supported because explaining to average Joe that having more wireless devices on WiFi reduces bandwidth is beyond difficult.

BT Vision has around 400,000 subscribers. TalkTalk TV (aka Tiscali TV/Homechoice) has around 20,000 subscribers - there hasn't been any provision for new subscribers to join for several years. It has been a 'run as it is service'.

BT charge £49.95 for the YouView box with an optional £35 ontop if you want an engineer to install it.

(Routers are charged at £6.95 for postage and packaging).

TalkTalk charge £50 for the engineer installation, router free, Youview box free.

What you have failed to mention is that Talktalk/Youview requires 3mbs minimum for the Video on Demand stuff, thats your iplayers etc.

5mbs+ gives you access to the TalkTalk Player which allows the Boosts for Sky Moves/Sports you touched on.

I work for one of the ISP's mentioned, and the reason for this post is to help correct the article, 'cos for some unknown reason I don't want my staff having to explain to Joe Public that some parts of the article are incorrect.

The Humax boxes are quicker than the Huawei boxes, however with each weekly update the Huawei boxes are catching up.

Anon for obvious reasons.

My main bugbear about set top boxes.

In the days of video, you could record in one room and watch in another. You could go off to bed and watch the film you recorded. Now you have to watch it in the same room. The media is not portable. Even if you have the likes of Sky multiroom, you are tied to the recording room.

Any chance the companies could get together and let you stream to other rooms?

absence of WiFi connectivity

Because it's a horror story to support.

I worked in an ISP doing cable broadband. I argued that since unlike DSL people can't buy their own Router, the modem should JUST be a Modem and then people buy their own router with whatever flavour of WiFi they want.

You'll find very very few TVs or setboxes with WiFi. Especially ones sold by people that might have to support it for "free". Ethernet is far more reliable and needs little support.

As if TalkTalk are trying to steal VM/$ky customers.

Those who pay for a $ky or Virgin Media subscription, are obviously comfortable spending a few bob for their telly, so why the hell would they want to put themselves through the hell of dealing with TalkTalk for the sake of saving a measly few quid?

TalkTalk, of course, once again, voted worst network and phone provider. For six quarters in a row, TalkTalk have been the worst and Virgin Media the best, so if anything, people would be moving from TalkTalk TO Virgin Media, not the other way around.

If folk don't realise TalkTalk is the bottom end by now, then hell mend them.