I am just curious did you see Bluewin tv on an LCD screen or normal tv(CRT). You only get the benefit of a LCD screen with HDTV, Blue Ray DVD or upscaled current generation DVDs, for existing tv channels you will get a worse picture than you do currently. Until there is more HDTV chanels and content which I can't see happening for a few years I am amazed that people are paying so much money for screens which given them a worse picture than their current set and as a biproduct general an enormous amount of heat and require more electricity than their current sets.
In a few years time the situation should be different but it mysterifies me what is going on today.
Have fun
Martin
The other one is indeed Blu Ray movies, played in the PS3. We ended up concluding that it pays to pick up 30 Blu Ray on any of my business trips to the US, at $10-20 a piece, rather than pay 19 CHF per person to go to the movie theater here.
I used to have HDTV in the Netherlands: about 4 channels. The world cup was an awesome experience on a 720p projector. They also had a HBO-like HD channel. Superbly nice. The Dutch market tends to be cheap when it comes to ADSL and HDTV.
I am not sure I'd pay extra for watching signal in HD unless the programming is appealling: movies/Discovery channels.
Since the HD-DVD was killed, close to all BDs I imported from the US are now region-encoded (I test all of them because I want to sell the ones that are region-free. Region-A disks don't sell here at all because there aren't any code-free players for Blu-Ray).
peter
I use a US-PS3.
When in the US, pay a visit to a Games Etc. store: they usually have a few used Blu disks for $8-$12. I expect the selection to grow over time.
Well, it looks great on my 81cm old tube TV Can't tell the difference in quality between it or my buildings old Cablecom line. I can't comment how it would look on a 102cm LCD TV tho. But I'd imagine probably just a lousy as regular cable TV or satellite, or anything else that's not High Definition...
It's a really new technology, and Swisscom is one of the first in Europe to deploy it. I think it has allready improved also since I saw it last year, and imagine the quality will only continure to improve. Also, the distance you are from the nearest VDSL switch is a factor in your connection speed, BUT it should cause pixelation. I can only imagine it may cause buffering problems (ie: stops playing for a moment then resumes).
A few comments reagrding the ordering/instal procedure:
ORDERING
You can order it on-line: link&subcat=OS_Bluewin_TV_Plus(MasterProducts)&drilldown=3) , by phone: 0800 800 800 or at and Swisscom shop. I ordered it by phone, since most of the call center people seem more knowledgable (plus they can transfer me to someone who speaks English if I get stuck with German )
The box came within 2 week, and it's a massive box I joked with the lady at the post office that a TV must be included in the box
INSTALLATION
Previously Swisscom charged you 95 CHF to send a technician to install it, but now they give you the option to install it yourself for free. To set it up is really very simple and a technician isn't really needed.
**Be aware! There is a one day gap between the disconnection of the old ADSL and the start of the new VDSL!**
Altho installing is simple, my 4 freinds who work at Swisscom who also choose the self install option had to have a Swisscom technician come to their apartment because they couldn't get it working. In all 4 cases, the technician discovered the phone line from the basement of their building to their apartment needed to be replaced, due to it being a old building with insufficient or old wiring (which the tech did in about 1 hour). So I'd reccomend to give the self instal a go, but keep the Swisscom help number handy.
You can use your existing wall plug also for the VDSL, only a new "digital stecker" (ie: splitter) is needed. Just throw away your old ADSL filter and use the new one. I'm not sure why Swisscom thought a technician was needed to be paid 95 CHF for that? Unless there was more problems perviously with the set-top box synching, or there was alot of bad wiring in the buildings that needed replacing (like my friends case).
The new VDSL modem is extremely simple to set up. Unlike my old ADSL modem, no password is needed for the VDSL. So you just plug it in and it connects itsself automatically. The Netopia modem Swisscom gives you has kind of a cheap feel to it (my Siemens ADSL modem felt alot more solid), but the Netopia gives alot of good advanced options. Motorola bought Netopia last year, so soon they will all be Motorola branded (and hopefully better quality). Anyway, there aren't many VDSL modems available yet, so not many options to chose from. The modem also has a Quality of Service (QoS) feature, so it can prioritize TV and phone traffic above downloading internet or FTP files.
The Bluewin TV takes 10-20 minutes to download updates and install them, but it does it on it's own, so you don't do anything, just wait. Then it works. Very easy. The modem must be left on the first 14 days , as the network monitors the connection and takes measurements to optimize the connection speed.
CONNECTION SPEEDS
With my ADSL 5000 subscription, I clocked FTP downloads at the promised speed of 5 Mbps, but today with my VDSL connection I clocked only 1 Mbps download speed on average (Swisscom promises 20 Mbps). But as they said, the first 14 days the network is optimizing the speed, and today is only the first day, so I'll wait and see if it improves. Altho when I logged into the modem, it said it registered connection speeds between 8 Mbps and 1 Mbps (..not sure what that means tho? Maybe max and min speeds so far?)
I'm also curious to see if the TV connection will take a bite out of my internet download speeds Today it didn't as I got 1 Mbps internet speeds with the TV on and off. But 1 Mbps isn't really much to begin with anyway. We'll see.
OTHER COMMENTS
Overall, I'm really happy with it. 20CHF a month is well worth it. I had got satellite TV system a few years ago, but had trouble with the reception due to the angle of my building. Plus I had to buy a 1 year card for 700 CHF up front, as opposed to the easier monthly Bluewin TV payments.
Also, included with the VDSL/Bluewin TV package Swisscom sends you is every cable type known to man (RCA, HDMI, SCART, 3 CAT5, RJ45...) plus a USB WiFi dongle (nice touch ). And as I understand, you get to keep all these when you cancel the service (just have to give back the set-top box and remote). So the 1 year cost of 240 CHF is worth it in hardware and cable alone
In all, I'm very happy and wonder why I didn't get it sooner. Any questions, please ask!
PS- No, I don't work for Swisscom, but I do work with them on occassion.
PPS- User guides and other docs can be found here&drilldown=3&lang=EN&subcat=OS_Bluewin_TV_Plus(MasterProducts)&id=000000000000119416Y(MasterProducts))
Bluewin TV Quality
I retract my glowing quality comment from yesterday . The quality of the image is overall OK at first view, but after watching a while I can notice some slight pixelation. Similar to watching a VCD or highly compressed DVD (or other streaming media with a less-than-DVD bit rate). Altho to be fair, some Cablecom channels taken from satellite can also be pixelated (namely Eurosport).
Also, there seems to sometimes be a problem with synch between audio and video. I have another friend who reported having this problem on occasion.
VDSL Connection
I also have to retract my comment about VDSL bit rate speeds. When downloading heavily from various sources, I can max my connection out to 5.5 Mbps (not 1 Mbps as reported yesterday). But that is the same speed I had with ADSL, so no benefit for me. My router says 8.8 Mbps max downlink, so I guess 3 Mbps is reserved for the Bluewin TV? Also my uplink speed increased. With ADSL it was 500 Kbps, now it's 1.5 Mbps.
Also VDSL gives me an IPv6 address, whereas ADSL gave me a IPv4 address. Not sure if that makes a difference regarding speed or quality tho.
One other observation: with the VDSL, my Torrent program finds more peers and the download speed has doubled on average (but still remains capped at 5 Mbps oberall). Not sure why. Maybe related to IPv6?
And since the electrician's fee of 95 CHF was all-inclusive, I also got him to rewire to my liking half the plugs and switches in the house for free (well, sort of) .
Although Bluwin never officially told us the service was available despite requesting they did so at their web site, In general Swisscom/Bluwin did as they promised; usually at the lower service levels offered. It was a full week before somebody scheduled a visit from our initial contact, and then it was a couple of weeks before the work could be done. We were told our Swisscom phone and DSL connections would be down for over 24 hours ahead of installation, as was the case, but when the engineer arrived to install the equipment he found some obstacles to getting the VDSL circuits working in our apartment, which meant it was a full week we ended up without phone and Internet connectivity.
Because our TV is not near our phone socket, we have had to purchase a wireless relay to connect the set top box to the router. In addition we were told that we should use the Internet wirelessly rather than by fixed Ethernet connections if we did not want to reduce the quality of service available for TV. In practice I haven't seen any degradation of service yet, in fact the Bluewin picture quality seems pretty good.
We have BBC channels 1, 2, 3, 4, Prime, Cbeebies, CBBC; ITV channels 1, 2, 3, 4; Film4; News channels from BBC, Sky, EuroNews, CNBC, CNN and Bloomberg (and Al Jazeera forthcoming). There's also Fashion TV and plenty of channels available in other languages, some of which may, for all I know, show some programming in original (English) language. I'm very much a newbie and haven't really explored the channels or the features offered by the set-top box and remote, other than that the remote gives access to a programme guide. Online you can change the sequence of radio and TV programmes. I think World Service is the only English language radio programme available. Most literature we have been provided with about BluewinTV is in German.
I'm pretty happy with the programme selection, although it would have been nice to have had more BBC radio channels, particularly Radio 5, and some US entertainment channels.
Does anyone have any useful tips or tricks to get the most out of this service and the kit? As I figure them out myself, I'll post them too.
I will switch back to Swisscom for ADSL and have gone for ADSL Max 20Mb connection. This requires an engineer to install a Digital box in the house. A Bluewin TV box could then be added to this easily from my understanding.
I have an Engineer booked for 2 weeks time, so just have to be patient.
I have SKY+ at the moment but would consider dropping this for a cheaper alternative. Also wish to consider the other Satellite options and know someone working on a HD alternative to the Dreambox . I think SKY & SKY HD is expensive for what it is, but happy with this otherwise. Will add non-English channels (from 13 & 19 degress) to the setup soon.
As we don't have cable into the house, then Satellite or Internet are the two options. Also recently have ended up buying things on DVD / Blu-Ray instead of watching them via satellite. For some TV series, this means a bit of a wait, but with movies out of the US means you can have them earlier.
Thanks! (Might have the same problem).
Otherwise, the kit says you can run a CAT5 cable up to 50m with no affecting loss. A 15m cable is included, which worked just fine for me. I get the same thruput with a 15m cable as a 1m one.
The distance is about 5 metres, but running a cable wasn't really an option, although you can run a cat 5 cable easily many times that distance.
OTHER UPDATES
INSTALLATION AND CONNECTION SPEED
Long story. I'll make it short. The "Self-instal" option means your DSL connection is fast enough to support BTV without having to drag new wires up from the basement, but unless you have a tech come and install new wires from the basement (for the low, low price of 95 CHF), you won't reach the full 20 Mbps promised by the VDSL. I did it with "self instal" and got 8.8Mbps. Now I have to call a tech to come put new wires in my wall to get the 20Mbps. This wasn't made clear to me until after several conversations with Swisscom.
If you have technical questions about Bluewin TV or VDSL call their tech support at: 844 844 884
They seem the most knowledgeable, compared to everyone else I'd talken to....
As for the Swiss being paranoid about radiation: it's true that cell phone radiation is much more of an issue in Europe than it is in the US. While I personally don't refrain from using a cell phone, I, too, believe a certain degree of common-sense should be applied to any kind of technology that uses radiation we don't yet fully understand in terms of its workings on a cellular level. While most people probably worry way too much about this, I believe some countries live in a total state of denial - the US for example, where cell phone usage is about 8 times higher then the European average (100 minutes per month versus 800 minutes per month...). They're not oblivious to the issue overseas, they're outright militant towards anyone who tries to be cautious about it...
peter
I have worked with RF a number of years and I'll go out on a limb and say Homeplug probably is safer in terms of radiation compared to wifi, since it's rides on a much lower frequency (~20 Mhz) and doesn't have to penetrate concrete walls that can cause 20dB loss to "over the air" radio signals. (I don't know too much about Homeplug specifically tho, so...)
The Swiss regulator BAKOM (like the US's FCC) made a study on it ( link ). But anyway, radio signals are all around. Electric lines themselves are also radiating RF as well as the sun itsself. So unless you live in a cave with no electricity there's no hiding from it (...and even so, cave-dwelling people with no electricity sometimes die anyway )
...but as this doesn't pertain to Bluewin TV, let's not go too far off on a tangent
This thread seems to be a bit dated. However I am posting to it to maintain continuity, as my query is based on this subject matter.
Has anyone tried to use Bluewin TV over Swisscom's ISDN offering?
From what I can gather from this thread is that Swisscom supplies a dedicated router for its Internet TV subscribers and the downlink speed is 16 Mbit/s? Is this still true?
Hence is the following setup worth considering?
- MultiLINE ISDN + Netopia 3300 ISDN/POTS Router
- DSL Extra (5 Mbit/s package)
- Bluewin TV Basic
Thanks.