You're all right but also wrong.... From someone who part of the company at the time it went something like this: NTL & TW had always been linked at an unoficial level, general product harmonisation was by and large done many years ago with only slight differences remaining in the last few years. NTL emerged from chapter 11 and made the well anticipated buy out approach (they were/are bigger). At this point TW and NTL had slight differences of opinion, the BBC have a 50% stake in Flextech, TW's content company (Living TV etc), under the terms of that agreement if TW/Flextech was purchased then the BBC had the right to walk, NTL viewed the content side (despite being proffitable and giving us the only leverage with SKY for content cable has) as something they didn't want to bother with. After a few weeks of back and forth NTL decided it was worth keeping and TW performed a reverse buy out on NTL (so on paper at least it's TW who did the buying) as this way the partnership with the BBC could continue.
NTL at this point had been in talks with Virgin about buying the Virgin mobile setup to move into quad play (TV, Phone, BBI, Mobile) and had been rejected, so they went back with more money and asked for the mobile side and the rights to use the Virgin brand for the next decade. Mr B and his board/shareholders said yes and that's where we are today. The first plan was to brand the company as UKCable (do a domain whois and you'll see it probably still points to Homer) but in light of the Virgin deal you will all soon have/have now a Grey/Yellow TV guide rather like Lunar Noir for XP
Oh and for the record new installs still go with a modem (Coax > Modem > PC/Router) Personally WRT54GL is your best bet due to the amazingly stable DDWRT firmware, it's VERY good (and I can't remember the last time I said that about a bit of home hardware). It's impossible to connect to the cable network without some form of cable modem (including those included in the TV box's).
NTL at this point had been in talks with Virgin about buying the Virgin mobile setup to move into quad play (TV, Phone, BBI, Mobile) and had been rejected, so they went back with more money and asked for the mobile side and the rights to use the Virgin brand for the next decade. Mr B and his board/shareholders said yes and that's where we are today. The first plan was to brand the company as UKCable (do a domain whois and you'll see it probably still points to Homer) but in light of the Virgin deal you will all soon have/have now a Grey/Yellow TV guide rather like Lunar Noir for XP
Oh and for the record new installs still go with a modem (Coax > Modem > PC/Router) Personally WRT54GL is your best bet due to the amazingly stable DDWRT firmware, it's VERY good (and I can't remember the last time I said that about a bit of home hardware). It's impossible to connect to the cable network without some form of cable modem (including those included in the TV box's).
Last edited: