Some general questions about BT Vision

craig1985_2

morning all

getting bt vision installed on tuesday (after a 5 week wait for openreach to install a phone line) and just had some general questions about the service which i cant seem to find on google or bt's own site

1) How good is the bt hub's wireless signal strength? we live in a a 3 story student house with 7 other students, should the bt hub be put on the middle floor to get best reception for everyone or will the ground floor do?

2) BT informed me when i contacted them that the vision demand content goes through the phone line but is not effected by broadband speed, but say if the broadband is getting used heavily will this effect any services on bt vision?

3) we arent allowed to install an external ariel due to the house being a ex-business property which has been converted and the council refused us permission , we ideally need a strong indoor arial which does not require any fitting to the walls or loft, any reccomendations? (we did have the idea between us all that using an aerial extension cable and placing an internal non powered aerial outside high up would be good but seems a bit risky.....)

thankyou in advance to any help and all of us are big fans of the forums student help section :T

macman

Can you get decent Freeview reception without an external aerial? Only the on-demand content comes through the broadband connection.
Also I think the Vision contracts are either 18m or 24m, is this appropriate for a student house?

Kurtis_Blue

craig1985 wrote: »

3) we arent allowed to install an external ariel due to the house being a ex-business property which has been converted and the council refused us permission , we ideally need a strong indoor arial which does not require any fitting to the walls or loft, any reccomendations? (we did have the idea between us all that using an aerial extension cable and placing an internal non powered aerial outside high up would be good but seems a bit risky.....)

thankyou in advance to any help and all of us are big fans of the forums student help section :T

Neither business premises or residential property's need consent for an external TV aerial, unless it is actually a council property.

If this is the reason for not using an external then just buy a loft spike (its only two-four screws) and an external aerial and fit in the loft void, something like a Unix 52 in the group banding for your area, it should pull in some if not all channels but can really only tell by trying, then if some channels are missing use a masthead amplifier.

Putting an internal aerial externally just doesn't make any sense, if you are going to fit an aerial outside then just fit a proper one, log periodic aerials are quite low profile visually.

littleboo

1) Lots of factors will determine your wireless coverage. The latest home hubs are wireless N, but you'll need N compatible adaptors in your laptops etc to benefit from that. It will also depend on the construction of your house and also if you have a high concentration of wireless network around you, particularly if they are on the same or overlapping channels.

2) You need a minimum broadband speed for Vision to work, some like 2 or 2 1/2 Mb. When watching on-demand content, a portion of your bandwidth will be reserved for TV. The rest is available for general internet use. It's described here

macman

Make that 4Mbps for BT Vision-and with 8 students hammering the bandwidth, I doubt if that will be enough anyway.

iniltous

BT Vision uses Qos for the on demand stuff so you get a solid stream, this is about 1.6Mb, enough for broadcast quality streaming, the rest of bandwidth is available for whatever else you want to do with your connection....I only connect at 2.5Mb connection but I can watch an on demand programme on BTV, the other half can be watching a programme on Iplayer and the boy be on line gaming on his PS3 all at the same time and all running perfectly.