I’ve been working in the Media Broadcasting industry for a little over 2 years now, it was about time to get VoD at home. Not that I will stop downloading those usenet binairies but still, can’t stay behind on HDTV and VoD from my sofa. At my house the main cable provider is Ziggo (used to be Essent@Home) and funny enough that’s one of our customers, I’ve been working on the Ziggo VoD platform from Day 1. So why not try to get it working?

First Attempt

Ok, guilty as Charged…I didn’t buy the Ziggo STB from retail but used up a few credits to get one of the Cisco HDTV PVR STB’s with a Ziggo Application preloaded. Now that was my first mistake, I’ll get to that later. Ordered a smartcard from Ziggo and provisioned the smartcard to do VoD (all officially & legal). Now here I was, Smartcard loaded in my STB, TV was working fine and about time to get the VoD up and running.

Well think again….

To use VoD your SettopBox needs to communicate back to the VoD Platform, for Ziggo this is done via an internal Eurodocsis modem build in the Cisco STB. This also means the cable that goes into the STB at your TV spot needs to be capable of having an upstream. That generally means No el’cheapo amplifiers, as they are commonly build up with diodes that won’t allow bi-directional signals via Coax and no filters.

So my cabling starts in the close to the Fuse box. Here is where my ISP signal comes in, get’s splitted to my Motorola VOIP Cable modem and to the rest of my TV cabling. From there it goes to the basement and get’s amped and splitted, 1 goes to my TV Spot in the living and the other one goes down to my backyard for the TV in my Office.
I allready removed the amp / splitter, since it was quite obvious that wouldn’t help. Signal indicated to be  good enough (75% strength and 75% quality) loaded the scanning utillity on the STB (searches for upstream frequency and tries to get an IP from the CMTS). But without any luck, start scanning and end’s with a weird error message “Code B”…

Ok, it might be my WWII aged cabling. Since my house is quite old (1903) and I think the Germans themselves installed my Coax cabling there might be a cable quality issue. But the downstream reports to be OK, seems like the little internal modem doesn’t have such a high quality tuner or the Ziggo network signal is very low. Allmost seemed too easy…

Second attempt

Since my LCD TV is hooked up too the wall and I’ve no intention of unscrewing it to drag arround the house to measure stuff. I borrowed a small test TV from work, what happend to the days of small CRT Tv’s you could easily drag arround the house? Today’s LCD TV’s are too big and I am way to scared to break it or let any other pixels die.
Well time to take the Cisco STB and try to get VoD from my basement (that the 1st location on where I split up signals) and here I was, standing in the Basement with a Small TV trying to get VoD working. I also unplugged the stock filter that came with my internet installation kit (small tripod connector, splits up to Modem F-connector and TV/Radio Coax), didn’t think about it so far, that could also filter out my upstream signal. This time I was more lucky…

The STB could tune to it’s upstream frequency, I even made 1 attempt of loading the VoD Catalog. But after that it died again, signal lost or just too bad to do any traffic. Shit? even the main cable from initial point to basement is shitty?
Okay no problem, took a 0,5m Coax cable walked over too the place where my Coax cable comes out of the ground. Unplugged everything (cable modem, router and stuff) it was only me, the STB and the input signal from Ziggo. If this didn’t work it wasn’t my problem!

Well it was my problem, since it worked just fine. Signal reported to be 100%/100%, STB found upstream again, got an IP from CMTS and I could load everything.

Started a free Promo video and worked flawlessly, video quality was good and trickplay seemed to work fine. I couldn’t be happy, since this means I have to re-do my cabling ffs! My Quality German laid cabling.

Third attempt

I’ve also found out that if you buy the Ziggo Retail installation kit it comes with a Bi-directional Amplifier. Does this mean they know the signal is low? or that the STB’s docsis modem is crappy? Or they just assume every customer has WWII german type cabling?

Well the time had come, I bought 25m of mediocre quality cabling (refuse to pay overpriced top-notch A-quality cabling just for video on demand), some mediocre quality connectors and the most simple, cheap, non-filtering splitter I could find. I refused to buy a bi-directional amplifier right away, that’s my last resort of hope!

And spend my sunday of recabling, splitted right where the signal comes into my house. One direct non-interrupted cable towards my TV Spott. Pulled out all my antique german cabling (which didn’t look so terrible, just less shielding).

And then connected my STB, if it fails to tune to the upstream now… I would burn the STB (or well … not really). Opened the Tuner status window, plugged it in. It reported 74% signal strength and 100% quality (not bad, considering no-amplifiers and the length of the cable) but this was without my cable modem and 2nd TV line connected.

The STB got the IP, found the VOD Catalog and I could start up a VoD session. Looked promising, connected my cable modem and 2nd TV Line… signal strength dropped to 51% but still at 100% quality. Luckily that didn’t matter, still got an IP and was able to setup VoD sessions without noticing a difference (the STB UI is slow anyway). So it was the signal quality that made the Eurodocsis choke? Due too my WWII german laid cabling? Guess so…

Some screenies, the Ziggo User Interface:

The UI looks quite nice and besides the STB’s “laggyness” (which they plan to improve) works quite OK. However it is very limited in the amount of Data it can display, sometimes makes it messy.

If you navigate to a movie everything is included, picture, text and some metadata (duration etc.). However for 2,90 euro I still wouldn’t do it, maybe if the price drops just a little. But then again paying 2,90 for the latest movie isn’t bad, just paying it for an old movie like finding nemo is too much in my opinion. Maybe this will get better if Ziggo starts making more revenue on this service, who knows?

After selecting your movie playback is simple, allmost just like a DVD or anykind. Movie starts within 3 to 5 seconds and you can trickplay (pauze, ffwd, rew etc.) which works quite OK. A little delay though but that isn’t annoying to me.

Conclusion

Video on Demand is nice, Interactive television is a neat thing to have. I must admit if the Prices are reasonable and the movies are recent I would use it… it’s just easy. Instead of spending that 15-20 minutes searching, downloading, placing a movie from the internet. It’s just a few clicks from your lazy sofa to start that movie and I can restart it later on (since it has a rental peroid just like a DVD rental) or pauze it if I need to pee. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t go to the movies anymore or wouldn’t download anything anymore… but it could be an alternative. Specially for my Girlfriend, who doesn’t know howto download (or doesn’t want to know) and this is a nice easy option for her to watch that chick-flick-romance movie.

However getting VoD running over Coax was a terrible experience. I wonder why Ziggo does not send engineers with the Installation package? To do the installation and explain a little about the STB’s UI. I mean, I am an engineer…cannot stand if something doesn’t work and will not rest untill it does. But my dad? After 3 calls to the service helpdesk he would’ve returned the STB and asked a refund. Maybe they should not use internal eurodocsis modems, just make a IP link (Everybody has internet these days) prefferable via Wifi or something (who doesn’t have WiFi in 2009?). Since the traffic that has to go back to the VoD platform is minimal, it shouldn’t be a problem.

Or maybe we all should wait for Fiber-to-the-home? 1 Cable for everything, unlimited BW…. ah well. For now just get proper cabling/connectors and Amp’s if you want to use VoD. And prepare to spend some time on it…