Tag Archives: Ondigital

A look at the Pace DTR730 (ONdigital)

Pace was one of the main suppliers of ONdigital receivers, having supplied boxes since the official launch on the 15th November 1998.

There are a few differences in contrast with the Nokia 9850T that I looked at previously, the bootup process behaves differently with the Pace flashing its front panel display for a few seconds before displaying the time (12:00, until it loads the time from the DVB-SI).
Another observation is the middle colon (:) on the display will flash when a button is pressed on the remote. This didn’t happen on the Nokia 9850T, even though it is documented in the instruction book.

The front LED display also flashes when coming out of standby, and like the Nokia it takes a few seconds to come out of standby.

Onwards there isn’t much difference, the software is mostly the same as the Nokia, its had the OnMail, and ONrequest update which enabled the guide menu to be accessed.

In terms of performance, it seems to be a bit more responsive compared to the Nokia

Hidden menu & Software Information

Like on the Nokia, a hidden menu exists that shows additional software information about the box.

To access, Press menu
Select option 7 (technical information)
Then select option 2 (manufacturer data)
Press text-guide-text-guide

ONMail remote

The box didn’t come with a remote, thankfully I had the ONmail remote which has the ability to control the box but requires to be programmed at first. This is because each manufacturer used their own remote control design and IR codes.
To set the remote code:
Hold the Red and Select button for around four seconds, then type in the code
Pace – 905
Nokia – 901

Inside the box

Lets see what powers the DTR730…

At the heart we have the ST20-TP4 processor, this seems to be a variation of the ST20-TP3 used in the digibox’s of the time and appears to be clocked at 50Mhz. This contrasts to the ARM Texas Instruments chip found in the Mediamaster 9850T, which was an ARM clocked at 40Mhz. It is unfair to compare both on the clock speeds alone, as they are of different instruction set with the Nokia being of the ARM family and the Pace belonging to the ST20 family of processors. Still the Pace feels a lot more responsive compared to the Nokia, although both are sluggish navigating the menus compared to more modern boxes.

STi3520LCV

An MPEG2 decoder is provided off-chip, very similar to what Pace used in their digibox’s of the time. At this point many of the components were not as integrated, so the Cpu and decoder were still separate chips. I’d say this is the same decoder they used on their Digibox’s, and the IPTV receivers (the DSL4000).

Like the Nokia, the tuner seems to be on its own board and is connected in a similar fashion. Here you have the tuner, RF modulator and the DVB-T demodulator. Here is provided by LSI Logic, whilst the Nokia used a Motorola processor. These would have belonged to the same generation and would have lacked 8K modulation support, meaning these boxes cannot receive modern Freeview broadcasts.
As both the Nokia and pace follow this modular-like design for the tuner, I’d guess this was a design consideration, and the mainboards were intended to be adapted easily for satellite or cable use, by separating the tuner module from the mainboard. I also wonder if this is similar to the hardware Canal+ had used for their equipment, just fitted with satellite tuners instead. Pace, Philips, and Nokia did make boxes for Canal+, who also designed the Mediahighway and Mediaguard components that ONdigital used, so it may be the case they just adapted the box design for ONdigital.

Underneath is the common interface slot, which is a PCMCIA slot for additional addon board like a conditional access interface, or to add an additional decoder.

Back in the day there were rumors of a satellite tuner being added as a sidecar to allow for them to receive ONdigital broadcasts, this never materialized and as such the slot remained redundant. Compared to the common interface on the Digibox, it’s a lot smaller but uses the same PCMCIA interface suggesting this was for conditional access use only.

The modem is integrated onto the mainboard unlike the Nokia which was a separate module, it looks to be the same hardware as the Nokia however. Its certainly a lot quieter as it does not make a click when the modem is accessed like the Nokia does (You can hear it when you try to dial into the ONmail service.

The back panel is fairly typical of ONdigital boxes, with dual scarts, audio out (No digital audio like the Sony or Nokia) and a serial port for the ONmail remote.

Memory/Flash

Fujitsu 29LV160B

Flash memory chips, each chip has 2MB of capacity for a total of 6MB. Rumor is there are two partitions, 2MB solely for Canal+ (Possibly the operating system itself?) and 4Mb for ONdigital’s resident applications.

NEC D4218165LG5

The main DRAM, I’d say there’s around 2 or 4MB of system RAM, assuming there aren’t additional chips on the underside of the board. Not much information on these can be found online.

LGS GM72V161621CT10K

Some sort of SDRAM for the MPEG2 decoder, appears to be 1MB in size for each chip for a total of 2MB, according to this site (assuming I’ve read this correctly)

Misc Screenshots

A look at the channel list, seems the box was able to retain some of its original channel list, but was rescanned at some point

Libdebug

Using the DigDebug and loading the appropriate configuration file, we are able to see the test process for the DTR730. Here there are options to:

Test and clear the flash memory did not want to do this since this will erase the current channel list
Enable/disable the test patterns (A color bar is displayed on screen)
Test the Mediaguard smartcard (If it’s inserted and detectable)
Turn on/off different SCART signals
Test the modem and have it dial out (Didn’t seem to work on my box)
Test the front LED display, you can either set it to be blank or light up all segments on the display

ONdigital – More Interactive services

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ONgames 1

Whilst Sky have Gamestar, Ondigital had its own set of games that were delivers on the service. Unlike Sky, Ondigital games were accessed by going to channel 45/46 and pressing the red button. There was no interactive button

Tom & Jerry

A simple cat & mouse game, basically Connect4

Treasure Hunt

IIRC you had to locate the treasure based on the items uncovered in the squares, kinda like minesweeper

Pigloo

You have to push the snowballs into the holes

Vegas Poker

ONgames 2

Forest Fire

Objective of this game was to put out the forest fires before time ran out

Dr Quiztoast

A Quiz based game where you had to answer the questions correctly

Memory Jnr

There were other games available which were not captured here, I remember one SunnyD basketball game which ran at 2fps on a Nokia 9850T

ONoffer

Similar to SkyBuy, provided limited time offers which you had to call a phone number to order. You couldn’t place orders through the set-top box. The keyboard in the bottom right is the ONmail keyboard.

ONmail

The ONmail user interface where users could send and view emails from the ONmail server. The ONmail service required a separate adaptor to be connected to the receivers serial port, and I’m not sure if all boxes supported this given the Sony and Toshiba receivers did not get the later software updates.

Active Service Screenshots

This isnt part of interactive service, but is still cool to look at whilst the service was still active. pressing the info button called up the now and next screen, which would only display what was currently shown. You can browse listings for other channels and view information on the programme being broadcast, but you can only see whats showing now and the next programme. In contrast to Sky who offered listings for the next 6 hours via the search and scan banner, with 7 days being provided through the main EPG…

..which ONdigital also lacked, at least inside the STB itself. ONdigital did provide a monthly magazine with listings for all channels, and there where a few MHEG services that offered a guide, typically for the next 7 days.

The service itself competed well with Sky’s analogue service, but falls short compared to Sky Digital, and when the cable companies launched their digital services alongside ONdigital was really looking antiquated. Still the service was attractive to people who wanted the popular channels that where previously unavailable to terrestrial viewers and did not want, or could even have a dish. Once Sky analogue shut down it was pretty much considered the bottom tier of TV, perhaps except for analogue cable. Still it had its own unique selling point being that it was plug and play and did not require instillation (in theroy, chances are you needed an aerial upgrade since the signals were transmitted at a lower power, we had to go through 2 upgrades before we got an actual signal)

Nowadays BT TV and TalkTalk TV have a very ONdigital feel to them givern they are DTT based, but feature IPTV delivery for the subscription channels, adn they have a limited channel selection in comparision to Virgin or Sky

ITV Digital Services

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ONdigital rebranded itself to ITV Digital in mid 2001, and launched a couple of Sport Channels along with acquiring the premiership rights to football, in the hope that more people would give the finger to Sky and subscribe to their service.

Spoiler: It didn’t, the company was Pepsi’d in 2002

ITV Select

Channel 50 was changed, with ONrequest being changed to ITVSelect with a rebranded interface. The offerings were still the same, with 5 PPV multiplex channels. Channel 20 was also changed, with ONview being replaced with the ITV Digital channel which displayed upcoming services and events via an interactive MHEG applet.

A minor software update was issued to amend the ONrequest option to ‘Order an Event’ when the guide menu is displayed. The service itself was also rebranded with a harsher colour scheme. Funnily ONmail was never changed, but ONnet was changed to ITV Active

ITV Sport Select

During football/soccer game a quick quiz could be played whilst the advert was being displayed. ITV Sport Select was the PPV Box Office channel for live events.

BBCi

A look at the BBCi bar, which you could access that would give now and next information whilst the channel was being displayed.

Interactive – Freeview and early DTT

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Back when digital TV first launched many broadcasters were free to experiment with the benefit that digital tv had to offer. Not only did we get an avalanche of channels, we also got interactive services which were to extend what Teletext/Ceefax offered.

These screenshots were captured and were uploaded to a site DTT NEWS, which has long gone offline. They have been archived here for a look at the early days of Freeview and interactive digital TV. Sadly what the screenshots do not capture is the long time it took for the ONdigital box to load the pages. Also some boxes didn’t support interactive at all, with the Sony and Toshiba lacking any MHEG5 support. I’m not sure why these boxes didn’t get interactive support, maybe Sony & Toshiba didn’t stick to the specifications and were not able to port the MHEG5 API? Memory limitations?

These screenshots are of Freeview/ONdigital DDT only, and will differ from what was offered by Sky or the cable services of the time (ntl/Telewest)

Teletext

The digital successor to ‘analogue’ text which was promised to be faster and more efficient, the drawback was the early ONDigital boxes had slow CPUs (The Nokia 9850T has a Texas Instruments 40Mhz ARM CPU) which meant it was slower than the analogue Teletext, Teletext was later axed and only the holidays branch remains.

I should mention that analogue Teletext/Ceefax itself is actually digital, its just transmitted within the vacant PAL lines, whilst digital teletext are MHEG applets that are part of the digital transport stream. You can also have both analogue and digital text at the same time, and have the STB regenerate the analogue teletext signals which are decoded by your TV, this also worked for subtitles (888)

Channel 4

FourText was Channel4’s digital text service which also covered FilmFour, now known as Film4. Like ITV’s services, these complement Channel 4’s programming.

BBCi

BBCi, previously BBC Text and now known as BBC Red Button was the replacement for Ceefax and made use of the MHEG functionality offered by DTT. The BBC operated three interactive channels known as 701, 702 and 703 which were used to offer extended coverage of sporting events and behind the scenes interactive features.

The BBCi bar was used to locate and find listings across the 6 BBC digital channels, it only functioned on the BBC channels.

Saturday Show

The Saturday Show was the replacement for Live&Kickng and competed with SM:tv, a few games and activities are offered with this service while the show was being broascast.

ITV Brit Awards

To complement the yearly ITV Brit awards, the interactive service offered updates, simple games and sponsor zones.

This Morning

This Morning was sponsored by LearnDirect, and was advertised on their interactive text service. LearnDirect is a company that offered course for people to learn from home int heir own time, and this service was designed to promote that by giving details that their adverts were not able to provide.

ITV Sport

To complement the ITV Sport channel, an interactive service was launched with offers additional activities like a quiz, and a match predictor that was sponsored by Littlewoods, who still operate as an online retailer.

SMTV

If you get bored of Ant & Dec that you could access the SM:tv interactive services that featured information in relation to the current show, any competitions and KFC, back when fast food joints could sponsor kids shows until Ofcom stepped in

ONdigital Interactive & Services

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Throughout the years that ONdigital had operated it had launched several interactive services to enhance and compliment their channel line up, and to make their service more competitive compared to Sky Digital and the cable operations by ntl and Telewest at the time. ONdigital used the MediaHighway and later MHEG5 interactive standard.

Several of the screenshots were hosted on DTT NEWS which has long since gone offline, they have been archived here for future refernce.

ONview

ONview was launched in mid 2000 as a replacement for the channel ‘FirstONDigital’ which broadcasted slideshows of upcoming news and service launches for the ONdigital platform on channel 20. ONview however was supposed to be the central portal of all ONdigital customers and operated as an MHEG service, I guess to entice non subscribers using IDTV’s to subscribe? At this point you could buy IDTV’s of which some came with ONdigital firmware loaded (with some being nothing more than a Nokia Mediamaster box being stuffed inside), some TV’s (Sony) did not feature this software and had their onw, which would explain why ONdigital moved from the MediaHighway middleware to the MHEG middleware.

ONguide

The ONdigital EPG, a tacked on MHEG5 app. The ONdigital boxes only featured a Now and Next style EPG built into their firmware, and was reliant one either a monthly magazine or a couple of interactive guides offered by BBC, ntl or Teletext.

Compared to Sky and cable its very poor, with no ability to set reminds unless you manually set the timer in the main menu. Meanwhile this is what the completion TV guide looked like…

Telewest Active Digital Guide — Cable & Wireless EPG Guide

ONinfo

ONinfo, with information about ONdigital’s services and how to subscribe, a later revision is shown on the right with information about ONmail and ONrequest

ONprizes section, where details of competitions and how to enter them.

ONsport – Sport highlights for ONdigital’s dedicated sport channel

Information on movies and event on ONrequest are promoted here and information on how to order from the service.

ONrequest

ONdigital’s Pay-Per-View service, where films could be ordered and screened across 5 multiplexed channels. Customers could access the service by going to channel 50 and pressing the text button when prompted.

A common thing you see with Onrequest is sweets, or sweet wrappers. I’m not sure on the connection between sweets and per-per-view movies

This part of the service is where you can view information about the movies that are offered, followed by a description of the event and the actors and director involved, along with the age rating.

To actually order the event you had to press the guide button and then choose option 2, which would load the actual PPV application where the customer could order the event, as long as their box was connected to the phone line. This was all done in the second part below.

The screen where you order the event itself. This looks like a MediaHighway applet.

This banner appeared when you entered an ONrequest channel whilst an event was currently being shown. Customer could see a 10 min preview of the start of the programme to entice them to order

Sometimes things went wrong

A look at the Nokia 9850T

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The Nokia Mediamaster 9850T was one of the first ONdigital receivers released to the market, alongside the Philips and Pace models, and one of the first digital terrestrial receiver that Nokia had made.

Like other ONdigital boxes, the 9850T uses SECA Media-highway for its middleware, alongside the MediaGuard conditional access system. The box also has a PCMCIA slot for future digital interfaces, likely to enable upgrades. The front panel design is similar to the other models of the time, all boxes had a Power, Select, Menu and directional buttons to allow basic control of the receiver without a remote, and a 4 digit display which would show the channel number and the time in standby

Front View

Rear View

Lifting the Lid

Tuner Block

The tuner is implemented on a separate module away from the mainboard, it seems the board is based off the 9800/9700 satellite receiver, and when it came to adapting the design for the 9850T, Nokia added the DVB-T tuner module as a separate module. This module is soldered in and cannot be removed.

Motorola MC92314 – Datasheet

The modem is also a separate component, connected what looks like an internal RS232 port, to the left you can see spaces reserved for the satellite tuner modules

Shot of the CPU and MPEG2 decoder, cannot find any other chips unless they are on the underside, so I assume this also contains the decoder.

Texas Instruments TMS320AV7110

From looking at the datasheet below, the CPU of the box is based on an ARM design and runs at 40.5MHz

Datasheet

Sony CXA20920 – AV encoder

Front panel display

Another shot of the main CPU and MPEG2 decoder, the Flash and RAM chips can be seen to the left side

The modem module itself

Size Comparison

Vs Pace Di4000

Vs Pace 2500S5

Conclusion

As this was one of the first DTT receivers on the market, the box seems to be quite primitive compared to the later Freeview receivers with its lack of a full EPG and more importantly 8K tuner support, however in the ONdigital era the Nokia was considered to be the more reliable and supported box (The Sony and Toshiba models did not get MHEG support) and there are reports of the 9850T being able to lock onto weaker signals better than its Philips or Pace counterpart.

The addition of the digital audio connecter would have been the main distinction from the other ONdigital boxes besides the Sony, since they were the only models to feature this.

Nokia would later go on to continue creating DTT receivers for the Freeview service, with models like the 221T or the 121T, which had an unorthodox and unique design compared to the traditional 9850T. Unfortunately Nokia exited the Freeview market after 2005, along with its satellite receivers and focused on mobile phones before Microsoft purchases their handset division. It’s not known it Nokia will reenter the set top box market.

ONdigital User Interface

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Switch On….

ONdigital was the first Digital Terrestrial platform in the world, and was to be a subscription service to compete with Sky analogue. Sadly it wasn’t to last as ONdigital entered administration in April 2002. The boxes themselves continued to work with the FTA Freeview service until 2011 when the transmissions were broadcast using 8K FFT, which the ONdigital boxes did not support.

The ONdigital guide software was developed using Canal+ Mediahighway middleware, alongside the NHEG5 virtual machine for digital text services. Mediaguard was used for the conditional access system.

Now & Next

Appears when you change channels, it cannon be called up by a button on the remote, you would use the Info button for now & next

The red dot means no signal

Pressing OK brings up a channel list, that can be used to jump to certain channels

Pressing info gives a now and next view on what’s currently being broadcast, you can select different channels but can only see now & next.

Main Menu

The main menu

Setting the Timer

ONdigital lacked an EPG, it had only now & next and that was it. If you wanted to record a program in the future you had to manually set it. ONdigital did provide a monthly magazine that gave TV listings for all of their channels which could be used to track the TV listings.

Its worth mentioning that Teletext, BBC, ntl, and ONview (ONdigital) offered MHEG service that broadcasted a TV guide, but this could not be used to set a reminder.

Favourite Channels

Favourite channels worked differently comparted to Sky or cable, you could mark as many channels as you wanted as a favorite, symbolized by a heart icon. However when the favorite channels settings was on, the Chan+ and Chan- would only scroll through favorite channels list only.

Whilst we are here, might as well look at the ONdigital era channel list, it seems the original owner never bothered to rescan the box after Freeview launched, and did not rescan it either after ONdigital rebranded to ITV Digital.

Parental Lock

Not much to see since I don’t know the smartcard PIN, but from memory you can lock certain channels.

Update: Managed to find the default PIN code, now we can see whats in the menu

Here you can lock individual channels from being accessed by marking them with the lock symbol, you can then press the green button to activate the locks. When you try to enter a channel you will be prompted to enter the PIN number to unlock.

You can change the PIN code to whichever you choose.

If you change the PIN back to 0000, the menu option changes to Enter new parental code instead of change parental code, and you are prompted to set a PIN code.

Viewing Preferences

Getting Started

ONdigital Updates

Smart Card data, shows when the current entitlements expire. it appears this card was in use until the demise of ITV Digital

The postbox, designed to receive broadcast messages, this was never used

Technical Information

Signal strength, you have to manually enter the channel number to find out

Information relating to the manufacturer, software version and hardware revision

Hidden information menu, not much to do except to view certain debug information

Guide: ONMail

Pressing the guide button brings up this menu

ONmail was ONdigital’s email service that could be accessed through the set-top box, using a remote and a receiver that plugs into the serial port on the ONdigital box.

A PIN is required to access the service, since the PIN number on the card is unknown, we are unable to progress past this point.

Not that we’d get any further, the servers were shut off shortly after ONdigital entered administration.

Update: Managed to get further

Misc

The menu from a Bush IDTV, here you can see some changes. Various references to ONdigital have been removed with option six being renamed to subscription information, and the ON logo being removed from the top left of the screen. This must be due to the change from ONdigital to ITV digital