Digital TV Blog

Virgin’s main Broadband rival jumps into bed with Sky, Ofcom gives Sky’s Premier League Freeview plans the yellow card.

Mutterings of talks between Sky and IPTV, Phone and Broadband provider Tiscali have materialised into a deal which sees the satellite broadcaster selling the rights to the channels it pulled from the cable operator’s platform to Virgin Media’s main broadband and TV rival Tiscali.

Tiscali will now be able to add the basic Sky channels – Sky One, Sky Two and Sky Sports News – to its IPTV platform for the same amount of coin that Virgin Media refused to cough up back in February. This deal will see Tiscali being able to broadcast Lost, 24 and Prison Break to its broadband consumer base, which may swell with disaffected Virgin customers.

Tiscali are currently the third biggest provider of broadband services in the UK, behind Virgin who are second. Tiscali are currently poised to annex the broadband and phone services of Pipex, which will see their ranks increase in size by half a million, applying even more pressure on Virgin.

Sky have also been quick to scoff at the prospect of Virgin 1, suggesting that the amount of money that cable operators have spent on the up and coming channel is far beyond the amount of money that Sky were asking for. “Time will tell whether Virgin Media’s customers view this as a good choice,” said Sky’s chief operating officer Mike Darcey of the forthcoming channel.

The move is probably more beneficial to Sky than Tiscali as it is detrimental to Virgin’s court argument; announcement of the deal comes just after it was revealed earlier this week that Sky received a blow from the regulators; Ofcom have decided to review Sky’s plans to launch a range of subscription channels on Freeview – something which would not only require existing Freeview customers to fork out for a new box, but pay for the channels as well, which pretty much defeats the whole point of the Freeview ethos.

As a result of the joint petition between BT, Setanta, Top-Up TV and Virgin, Ofcom have put a hold on the launch of Sky pay-per-view channels on Freeview until further notice. Sky had intended to replace its free channels on Freeview with subscription channels, presumably including Sky Sports One, in August, in time for the beginning of the new Premier League season, which means it will miss out on potential customer revenue from a consumer base represented by the most popular digital TV choice in the UK.

Ricky Hatton reclaims IBO crown

Ricky “The Hitman” Hatton is now the holder of the IBO light welterweight crown following his fourth round demolition of Jose Luis Castillo, shown live on Setanta Sports.

Entering the ring in a sky blue sombrero with matching poncho, he was flanked by the great Mexican fighter Marco Antonio Barrera and Manchester United footballer Wayne Rooney, both carrying Hatton’s existing belts.

Starting a little over-enthusiastically, it took only four rounds for “The Hitman” to send, the much fancied Castillo to his knees, after a devastatingly accurate left-hook to his right kidney. McGuigan and Co. in the Setanta Sports studio claimed this to be the best shot to the body they have ever witnessed and purred at the enormity of this stateside victory.

Spurred on by over 10,000 English fans making the long trip to the Thomas and Mack Arena at Ceasars Palace, Las Vegas, Hatton surely has earned the right for a “super fight night” against the supposedly retired Floyd Mayweather Jr. or the Golden Boy, Oscar De La Hoya.

Castillo himself came close to beating Mayweather Jr. in 2002 – maybe The Hitman, who is expected to retire after the next four major bouts, will cross paths with “Pretty Boy” Mayweather before he hangs his gloves up.

Freeview DVR plays ball with pay-TV platforms

There’s been a bit of a buzz on net forums of late over the appearance of several Freeview boxes which have come emblazoned with a new Freeview Playback logo (pictured). This is something of a rebranding exercise, and is similar to the HD Ready stickers you’ll see on the side of TV sets capable of displaying high-definition images.

The Freeview Playback emblem means that the digital receiver has full DVR functionality – this includes an EPG, and the ability to pause, rewind and record programmes in the same was as you can with Sky+ and Virgin Media’s V+ services.

Freeview DVRs have been around for a while now, so nothing has changed on the technology front, this is simply a way of letting customers know what their set-top box can do.

Cable network unveils its TV acquisitions

Virgin Media have successfully inked a deal with Warner Bros. which will see the fledgling Virgin 1 channel have exclusive UK broadcast rights to hotly-anticipated Terminator spin-off, The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

The series, supposedly set between the movies Terminator 2 and 3 stars British actress Lena Headey - recently seen in historical romp 300 - as the titular heroine, and follows her and on-screen offspring John Connor - played Thomas Dekker, who was in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids - who are on the run from the law as well as another Skynet killing machine.

The deal also sees the entirety of the Star Trek franchise being beamed down to Virgin customers receivers – roughly 624 hours of content which includes everything from the original 1966 series to the fairly recent Enterprise prequel.

Following in the footsteps of Living’s highly successful Most Haunted, Virgin have also reportedly commissioned a series tentatively titled The Real Exorcist, which based around the exploits of Rev. Bob Larson, who once hosted the infamous “Talk Back” phone-in show in the US, and who has previously performed live exorcisms on TV.

Virgin 1, which will now compete directly with its Sky opposite number Sky One, will launch on its own platform and on Freeview this autumn. The Freeview exposure may be crucial to viewing figures, as it remains the most popular digital TV choice in the UK, and will go some way in realising MD of Virgin Media TV Jonathan Webb’s goal of: “Virgin 1 and the newly reinvigorated Living [becoming] two of the top television channels by switchover.”

There is still no firm news yet about a Virgin/Setanta sports news channel, but it is fairly safe to assume that it is going to happen, given that Setanta fought long and hard to pip the jewel in Sky’s pay-TV crown.

Obsolete models to be dumped post-switchover

Despite the environment and recycling appearing to be at the forefront of political campaigns these days, there is currently no plans for the safe collection and disposal of the huge number of incompatible TVs and VCRs that will be made redundant by the digital switchover; many are justifiably concerned about the damage that will be done the environment if the obsolete hardware is dumped en masse.

Currently, any TV set without a 21 pin SCART socket will be incapable of receiving a digital signal, with a number of reports suggest that 4 million TV sets will be abandoned with others suggesting that the figure is something closer to 5 million – however, it is estimated that roughly 2 million of these non-SCART sets will be able to be converted by an RF modulator connected either to the TV or a set-top box, in order for the digital signal to be decoded and displayed correctly.

The time-shift function of many VCRs will not work when the analogue signal is switched off. Although DVRs have been mooted to become the replacement for old VHS machines, they would be less efficient, as Steve Weller, head of communication services at uSwitch.com points out:

“VCRs won’t work in the same way after the switchover. If you go out or even go on holiday, you would have to leave your digital receiver switched on and set to the channel that you want… hardly in line with the drive to improve household energy efficiency. With 21 million video recorders in use across the UK – or about 1 per household – isn’t this something that perhaps we should have been warned about.”

Whilst its true that the switchover will invariably make some older models of TV sets obsolete, it will not make them useless – their primary function certainly will be superseded by the digital revolution, but that does not mean than landfill sites will suddenly become choked with a sea of dead cathode ray tubes - sales of old VHS titles on eBay are going strong, and that standalone TV sets may be set aside for such things as gaming, or watching films.

Still, when politicians from all parties, but especially those whose role it is to prepare the country for the digital age, are trying their hardest to out-green each other, its telling that an environmental problem such as this one presents itself, and as of yet there are no plans to do anything about it.

Olympic logo farce highlights approaching switchover deadline

With the last phase of the digital switchover not due to take place until 2012, it is currently likely that viewers watching the London Olympics from abroad will be able to do so in better quality TV than UK residents.

According to a report in the Telegraph, The HD For All lobby group, was contacted by ITV boss Sir Michael Grade, who intends to take the high-definition issue to the Government and ensure that HD is available on the Freeview platform in time for the Olympic games.

Grade said that the group is determined to “get the Government and the regulator [Ofcom] to understand… the level of consumer anger they are going to face after analogue switchover when the public realise that they will be unable to receive their favourite channels in HD on Freeview on the HD-ready TV sets they are buying in their millions.”

Switching off the analogue signal would allow for more data to be transmitted. Conceivably, the free space could be used to broadcast all the current DTT channels at a higher resolution, therefore making HD the new SD.

Ofcom is due to auction off this signal spectrum, the rub being that commercial pay-TV broadcasters are going to be armed with considerably more financial clout than licence-funded public service broadcasters. Over 2 million UK citizens have forked out for expensive HD Ready TV sets, and with Freeview still being the most popular Digital choice, plenty of people will be upset if it means their HD investments don’t pay off.

In the Telegraph report, Steve Dowdle, the managing director of Sony UK and HD For All member is quoted saying that the Freeview platform will meet with an “inevitable demise” without HD, and that “a two-tier TV society” would be the result of HD not coming to the terrestrial platform.

One thing that pretty much everyone can agree on though, with the possible exception Seb Coe, is that the 2012 Olympics logo is going to look like an unpleasent neon botch job whether viewed in HD or not.

Talk of US TV deal sees Sky/Virgin war heat up

It appears that Virgin Media have indeed been doing something with the money that they’re now not paying to Sky. Virgin is reported to be in talks with US distributor Warner Bros for exclusive distribution rights to a number of hit shows.

Warner Bros, whose Ted Turner is also a media rival with Rupert Murdoch, would supply Virgin Media with a fresh pick of shows, with Virgin obliged to screen at least one show a year for however long the contract lasts.

The shows up for grabs include Gossip Girl, a new series from Josh Schwartz, creator of the hugely popular teen drama The O.C. (which had its first successful run on Fox in the US) a Terminator spin-off entitled The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and the Buffy-esque Twilight, which follows a private investigator who has been bitten by a vampire.

This news follows a similar deal between ABC, National Geographic and Channel 4, which has seen programmes such as Ugly Betty and a range of history and wildlife documentaries broadcast on 4oD.

Virgin has been keen to replace the damage done to its services after the big falling out with Sky - it has already been reported that the cable company had signed a deal with ABC in order to eventually be able to broadcast the whole third season of Lost. With the pay-TV competiton just as hot on the other side of the pond as it is here, we could see more US content from Sky rivals arrving soon. It is entirely possible that this new content will find home on Virgin 1 the new Virgin cable channel, which is sue to go live over this summer.

Cable quadplay provider is in healthy shape

Despite attracting heat for losing Sky channels, shaping bandwidth, losing its broadband crown to BT and inheriting a wealth of customer service woes from the NTL side of the merger, Virgin Media has made some headway since its inception early this year.

TV subscriber numbers are higher than expected, with Virgin welcoming thousands of new customers in April and May, against previous predictions of subscriber defection to Sky, Freeview and BT Vision.

Whilst Virgin has not exactly experienced a significant influx of customers, the expected churn has not happened and the cable operator looks to be in good health. Later this year Virgin plan to launch two new channels, Virgin 1, which will feature a mixture of commissioned and acquired entertainment, and an as of yet unnamed sports news bulletin in order to replace the lost Sky channels.

Terrestrial broadcasters to launch YouTube/Joost rival?

The BBC, ITV and Channel 4 have been holding talks concerning a joint venture online video downloads service that will “do for broadband what Freeview did for digital TV.” Currently under the working title of ‘Project Kangaroo,’ the idea is that content from all the broadcasters will be made available to view online on one platform.

With services like Channel 4’s 4oD and Five’s five.tv now firmly entrenched in the public consciousness and the Beeb’s somewhat controversially named iPlayer service soon to be re-launched after its successful trial, it makes sense from the perspective of computer users to have just one application stored on their desktops as opposed to several.

With P2P services like Joost and YouTube regularly showing copyrighted content for free, and with more IPTV services such as BT Vision increasing in popularity, the terrestrial broadcasters hope that Project Kangaroo will go some way to increasing revenue and replicating the success that Freeview has enjoyed.

New sports and entertainment channels set to arrive on cable platform

Virgin Media has recently unveiled Virgin 1 - a new entertainment channel set to be launched on its own digital TV platform as well as Freeview and, hopefully, Sky. The channel is set to be aired in the autumn, and will most likely feature content from Virgin-owned subscription channels Bravo and Living.

There have also been repeated whispers from sections of the press concerning talks between Virgin and a sports broadcaster – most likely Setanta – over a deal which would create a new sports news channel which would replace the missing Sky Sports News.

It is hoped that these new channels will go some way in restoring the damage done by the March loss of channels farce, and it makes sense for Virgin and Setanta to jump into bed with one another as they are both arch-rivals of Sky.

Virgin had stated in the past that money saved from not paying carriage fees to Sky was going to be reinvested into new programmes, content and features – so far we have seen Virgin Media boost their broadband speeds, give away free DTT receivers and extend their ADSL network so non-cable customers can sign up for the full ‘quad-play’ of available services.