Walking on the wild side with NTL

NTL, the cable television operator that used the strapline “technology tamed” in its advertising jingles, is finding the latest “technology” harder to tame than it thought.

The company is trying to force its cable customers to ditch analogue TV and take up digital TV, but has stumbled upon a tricky problem.

The digital remote control is, in fact, inferior to its analogue predecessor. Put simply, the volume control doesn’t work and nor does the mute button.

It sounds like a subtle ruse to stop viewers drowning out those annoying ads that keep appearing in the middle of programmes.

Or maybe it’s another of those technical glitches that NTL finds so hard to resolve. It sounds like a case of technology gone wild.