Multi-Choice TV (Barbados)

Multi-Choice TV

The television service provider known as Multi-Choice TV or MCTV is a MMDS or DVB-C wireless microwave based broadcast subscription television provider in the country of Barbados. They offer a variety of packages which can be considered as comparatively priced to similar providers throughout the world. The service began operating on December 14, 1987 under the name Subscription Television (STV), which had very few channels offered main channels were (CNN, ESPN, Lifetime Television, Cartoon Network and TNT LA.) with an occasional option of Pay Per View being offered for local special events and the occasional international PPV sports broadcast. In 1996 it was upgraded to include a new platform called Multi-Choice TV which was an analog wireless microwave broadcast offering many more channels (i.e. BBC, Canada's CBC, TBN, etc.) eventually maxing the bandwidth capacity and having lately to upgrade the service to a digital broadcast system, Multi-Choice TV have not fully converted all of its subscribers as yet. The system relies on line-of-sight propagation so total island wide coverage have proved to be a problem and the provider is looking into alternatives. A recent press release have indicated their interest in a partnership with the local telco LIME . From 1 September 2008 MCTV replaced the Travel Channel on 511 (part of the High Flyer package) by Setanta Sports.

Given that the service uses a Yagi antenna to receive the encrypted broadcast, which in turn is then decrypted by the provider's set top box. The provider now has the problem of signal theft by pirates using modified DVB-C compatible receivers and PCI cards with the most popular being the "Dreambox" manufactured in Germany to decode their signal which is based on Nagravision which is a conditional access control system developed by Kudelski . In order to prevent such activity in August, 2006 the Government of Barbados stiffened the local Barbadian copyright laws, in addition to a strengthening of the laws on cable TV piracy. The CBC provider is presently planning for further circumvention of the Dream boxes in 2009.^[1]

Multi-Choice TV also competes against the US-based direct broadcast satellite (DBS) service provider DirecTV in Barbados.

The service uses the NTSC television format.

Current channel lineup

Below is a numerical representation of the Multi-Choice TV channel lineup. These channels are arranged in five tiers:

Channel	Tier	Network	Site	Notes
108 - 112: Local
108	Basic	CBC TV 8	Link	Local government-owned CBC TV-8.
109	Basic	Discover Barbados TV	*
110	Max Pak	Sportsmax	Link
111	Basic	"The One" 98.1 FM	Link	(As audio stream only)
112	Basic	"Quality" 100.7 FM	*	(As audio stream only)
200 - 209: News
200	Basic	The Africa Channel	Link
201	Basic	CNN	Link
202	Variety	CNN International	Link
203	Basic	MSNBC	Link
204	Basic	BBC World	Link
205	Basic	Fox News Channel	Link
206	Basic	truTV	Link
207	Basic	Bloomberg	Link
208	Basic	CaribVision	Link
209	Variety	China Central Television (CCTV)	Link	the Chinese national television network.
300 - 305: Sports
300	Basic	ESPN	Link
301	Variety	Fox Soccer Channel	Link
302	Max Pak	ESPN2	Link
303	Max Pak	FUEL TV	Link
304	Max Pak	The Golf Channel	Link
305	Max Pak	Speed Channel	Link
400 - 406: Children
400	Basic	Boomerang	Link
401	Basic	Cartoon Network	Link
402	Family	Animal Planet	Link
404	Basic	Discovery Kids	Link
405	Family	Nickelodeon	Link
406	Family	The N	Link
500 - 511: Educational/Entertainment
500	Basic	National Geographic Channel	Link
501	Basic	Discovery Channel	Link
502	Basic	Discovery Health	Link
503	Basic	PBS (affiliate unknown)	Link
504	Variety	Sony Entertainment Television	Link
505	Variety	WPIX-TV (The CW)	Link	New York City, United States
506	Variety	WWOR-TV (My Network TV)	Link	New York City, New York
507	Variety	CKVU-TV (Citytv)	Link	Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
508	Variety	Oxygen	Link
509	Variety	Lifetime Real Women	Link
510	Variety	History	Link
511	Max Pak	Setanta Sports North America	Link
600 - 608: Spirituality, music and culture
600	Basic	TBN	Link
601	Basic	3ABN	Link
602	Basic	EWTN	Link
603	Basic	VH1 Soul	Link
604	Basic	Gospel Music Channel	Link
605	Basic	E!	Link
606	Basic	A&E	Link
607	Variety	Centric	Link
608	Basic	Tempo TV	Link
700 - 712: Entertainment
700	Basic	WABC-TV ABC	Link	New York City
701	Basic	BET	Link
702	Variety	WSEE-TV (CBS)	Link	Erie, Pennsylvania (Prime Time 24 feed)
703	Basic	CBLT (CBC Canada)	Link	Toronto, Ontario, Canada
704	Variety	Game Show Network	Link
705	Basic	Lifetime	Link
706	Variety	WNBC (NBC)	Link	New York City
707	Variety	WSVN-TV (Fox)	Link	Miami, Florida
708	Variety	TV Land	Link
709	Basic	HGTV	Link
710	Family	Food Network	Link
711	Basic	DIY	Link
712	Family	Fine Living	Link
800 - 810: Movies
800	Basic	TNT	Link
801	Movies	HBO Plus	Link	HBO-Latin America
802	Movies	Cinemax East	Link
803	Movies	HBO East	Link
804	Movies	Cinemax West	Link
805	Movies	HBO West	Link
806	Movies	Hallmark Channel	Link
807	Movies	Lifetime Movies	Link
808	Movies	Cinecanal West	Link
809	Movies	Movie City East	Link
810	Movies	Turner Classic Movies	Link

See also

• Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)

References

1. ^ Alleyne, Barry (28 November 2009). "DREAM OVER". Nation Newspaper. http://www.nationnews.com/story/dream-over-for-CBC-pirates-copy-for-web. Retrieved 2 December 2009. ""Our investigations also discovered that Dream Box users were able to get a free service since early 2008, because CBC's old encryption software only scrambled their MCTV signal every two minutes, which allowed the Dream Box to recover the signal. But the new security will leave the Dream Boxes crippled. "This is a money business, and encryption is always changing, and not cheap. The new software will actually scramble the MCTV signal every ten to 15 seconds, so Dream Boxes will not be able to keep up, and eventually lose the entire signal," the source added."" ^{[dead link]}

External links

• Official Site
• Dreambox Support
• Cable channels lineup - List of cable service channels