Digital TV Blog

Last chance to catch Most Haunted Almost Live! on Ftn

It's less than a week until Virgin 1 launches itself on British screens and replaces the old Flextech channel Ftn. Virgin Media have assembled a roster of new and old sci-fi and drama from the US and the UK, and on its debut night will launch with The Riches, the acquisition of which was something of a coup for Virgin, and the male 'wang-xiety' documentary entitled The Great British: Penis Envy. It is understood that Ftn favourites such as Takeshi's Castle and Ultimate Poker Challenge will remain.

Virgin will be promoting the new channel with a TV ad showcasing the best the channel has to offer in the form of clips from The Riches, Boston Legal and The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

The ad promises to offer "No soaps", "No makeovers" and "No nonsense" viewing, concluding the advert with, "Virgin 1; Proper Telly" (delivered in a Ray Winston voice).

A clip from the Penis Envy doc has also been doing the rounds on YouTube, but if you're planning on checking it out, you might want to look over your shoulder and see who else is in the room before typing 'YouTube', 'Virgin' and 'Penis' into a search engine.

Virgin 1 will be available on the following channels from Monday the 1st of October:

Freeview: 20
Sky: 153
Virgin Media: 122

Rival broadcasters united against provisional HD

Don't hold your breath: Sky and Virgin haven't done a sudden volte-face and arranged a price for the missing channels – they just both happen to agree on something, for once.

With regard to Ofcom and the government setting aside a percentage of the UK broadcast spectrum so that the five terrestrial channels (BBC One and Two, ITV1, Channel 4 and five) can broadcast content resplendent in shiny happy HD post-switchover, the two CEOs of Sky and Virgin both give a resolute thumbs down.

Arguing that HD is the medium, and not the message, Virgin Media's Malcolm Wall said that "HD is not a public service issue, but a value add and as such people will pay for it."

Sky boss James Murdoch echoed this sentiment with "You have people paying for this, and to suddenly say it has crossed the threshold of public necessity is preposterous."

This is not unexpected, after Sky's Martin Le Jeune had branded the HD for All lobby group 'Silly' in the past, although if terrestrial channels were given HD airspace, customers who got hooked on HD on Freeview might be tempted to migrate to a pay TV platform where HD is in abundance, so it might work in favour of the HD for All naysayers.

HD was first introduced to the UK TV market by Sky, and Virgin followed suit with the popular V+ service on its launch this year. Both companies have invested a lot into bringing HD to British screens and will not want to see the value of their services diluted by what is essentially a free version of premium product.

Last week, it was announced that Ofcom had green-lighted the BBC's proposal to launch a separate HD channel for broadcasting on all digital TV platforms, with the proviso that they compress the size of the data of transmissions to make the programmes more bandwidth-friendly for customers wanting to make use of IPTV.

If Auntie successfully goes ahead with its pilot HD channel, it may be only a matter of time before the rest of the Beeb retinue get the HD overhaul and the others follow suit – PSB dictates that all state-sponsored content must be available to all licence payers, i.e. anyone wot owns a telly. If this happens – which, if it does, won't be for years to come - then Sky and Virgin will have to up their game and lower prices and/or improve the quality of their services, which may be bad news for their budgets, but good news for customers.

Regulator approves high-def Beeb channel

Ofcom has given the BBC the go ahead to relaunch its HD channel, which trialled successfully in May last year. The channel, which broadcast the critically acclaimed 2005 version of Bleak House, Heroes and The Proms along with maligned Doctor Who spinoff Torchwood, and er, the Eurovision Song Contest in HD during its trial run will undergo extensive technological upgrades before broadcast, to ensure that everyone with a Freeview box can receive the service as per the PSB remit.

IPTV operators, chiefly BT and Tiscali aren’t too happy about the idea that HD content is slated to be made available on the BBC iPlayer – HD downloads are bandwidth hungry, and this could compromise the quality of their subscribers services. The BBC have received more than a fare share of criticism over their iPlayer, which is as of yet unavailable to non-Windows users. Ofcom have recommended that the BBC invest in a way of compressing the size of HD downloads so that they do no adversely affect others in the marketplace.

The Ofcom report said: "The BBC HD channel is likely to deliver consumer benefit through increased take-up of HD. This positive impact is likely to be spread across the major TV platforms, including DTT, satellite and cable." Currently, plans for the channel involve broadcasting a 9 hour burst from 3PM to midnight if enough airwave spectrum is available.

It slices, it dices, it plays games, music, and recorded TV…

Sony has officially announced the arrival of their PlayTV platform which adds a whole new dimension to the impressive but ailing PlayStation 3 – gamers will now be able to watch, pause, and record live TV using the console's hard drive.

The PlayTV platform is essentially a Freeview box that plugs into a PS3. The PlayTV box handily comes with two HD-ready TV tuners, so you can watch one programme and record another in glorious 1080 progressive scan resolution.

Even better, PSP users will be able to transfer recorded content from the PlayTV, presumably either by Wi-Fi or USB, for viewing on the move. It is, in Sony's words "designed to reinforce PS3's rightful place in the living room."

The Sony PlayTV also features a fully programmable 7 day EPG; this and other features are accessed by using a wireless PS3 controller or a separate Sony remote.

Sony PlayTV will make its UK debut early next year – just in time for the great digital switchover.

Virgin to air controversial dickumentary on new channel

Virgin 1, the saving grace of Virgin Media, is set to deliver a Freudian death blow to the fragile psyches of the male half of the UK population on its arrival, by broadcasting a one-off primetime documentary entitled 'Penis Envy', the makers of which have undertaken a nationwide survey to discover the average UK penis length, girth and have explored the various cosmetic enhancement processes available.

Celia Taylor, director of programming for Virgin 1, said: "Penis Envy will be fascinating, funny, smart and – for some – a real eye opener… [it will] take a really candid look at what is still quite a taboo subject in Britain today and is just the start of what viewers can expect to see on Virgin 1 in the autumn as we bring the very best in bold and clever factual documentaries to the channel."

The so-called 'cockumentary' is being produced by TwoFour Broadcast, who are the people behind the Three Minute Wonders documentaries for Channel 4 and the range of Extreme celebrity programmes for LIVINGtv.

It has also now been confirmed that Virgin 1 will take the place of Ftn, which is owned by Virgin and acts as an opposite number for Sky Three, in that it broadcasts repeats of popular programmes available on the prime Virgin channels.

Triple-play provider signs up Sky football rival

ISP Tiscali has signed a deal with Setanta Sports which sees the Irish-based sports broadcasters' services be made available on their IPTV platform. The Setanta Sports Pack is now available to Tiscali TV customers for £9.99 a month, and provides coverage of 46 of the Barclays Premier League games and 60 Clydesdale Bank SPL games, plus a range of European and American sporting action from the US PGA Tour, the Magners League and the French Top 14.

Sports enthusiasts can also add the Sky Sports package for complete Premiership coverage from £21.99 a month.

This is great news for customers who want digital TV choice and broadband, but don't live in an area where Sky has set up connections in their local exchange. Tiscali have recently revamped and relaunched their TV platform, potentially extending their services to 10 million customers.

The Setanta Sports Pack is now available on pretty much every platform, including Freeview, Sky, BT Vision and free on Virgin Media.

Analogue sets will not be stocked in 2008

With the first stages of the digital switchover due to begin next month in Whitehaven, the TV industry has taken a large step to encourage the switchover by halting the production of old analogue sets that are only capable of receiving 5 channels.

High street black goods merchants Currys and Comet and telly manufacturers Sony and Panasonic have all said last night that they would stop selling and making outdated analogue TVs. From next year, only TVs with Scart connections and IDTV sets will be manufactured.

This represents the biggest leap forward yet in the digital revolution, effectively marking the end of TV as we have come to know it.

Residents in Whitehaven need to get their skates on – with analogue shutdown due to happen in less than month, recent surveys estimate that only 8 out of 10 homes in the Whitehaven area have are digital-ready – with retail outlets such as Tesco providing cheap as chips set-top boxes, and Virgin offering their ADSL subscribers free Freeview boxes, and the Digital Switchover Help Scheme being set up to help Cumbria residents, there are few excuses not to get connected.

Give 'em the boot

ITN has been given the go ahead to be the sole producer for Setanta's forthcoming sports news channel which will initially be broadcast on the Virgin Media platform. The channel, set up to replace and rival Sky Sports News which, as pretty much everyone now knows, least of all cable customers, went walkies from the Virgin platform back in March.

The 24-hour Setanta Sports News channel, will be jointly owned by Setanta Sports and Virgin Media, will launch on Virgin Media's cable TV network later this year, and is expected to launch on other platforms early in the New Year.

Mark Wood, ITN chief executive, said: "This new channel will set the sports news agenda in Britain with exclusive news, ground-breaking interviews and programmes which will be must-see television for sports fans everywhere."

ITN produces content for a number of British channels including ITV, a controlling share of which is owned by Sky. Awarding ITN the rights to produce content for a rival sports show is a logical, but still pretty cheeky move on Setanta and Virgin's part.

Setanta and Virgin realise that Sky is the leader in the pay TV world and so have decided to form a mutually beneficial alliance in order to see if the market force of Sky's 'Death Star' really can be resisted; earlier this year, Setanta announced that its flagship service the Setanta Sports Pack would be made free to all Virgin Size: XL TV customers.

Virgin Media's hotly anticipated channel Virgin 1 has also recently dropped out of development hyperspace and is due to touchdown on cable, Freeview and Sky soon.

UK DVR manufacturer manufactures matchbox-sized DVR

TVonics, who have manufactured the successful Freeview Playback-enhanced FP250 and FP300 (below) DVR set top boxes have recently come up with an ingenious switchover solution for older TV sets which don't have any Scart sockets.

The MFR-200, is an unbelievably tiny matchbox sized digital set top box, which plus directly into the antenna input of an TV set, and like most receivers, displays all of the Freeview channels on one unused channel. The MFR-200 comes with an 8-Day EPG, DVB subtitles, and MHEG5 1.06 digital Teletext, similar to that which is featured on the Top-Up TV platform.

This is great news for people who were worried that they would have to throw away their old TVs post-switchover, and will help lessen the potential waste damage to the environment that a mass analogue graveyard would cause. Additionally, the MFR-200 is consumes a tiny 5W of energy when in use and 2W when in standby mode, making this ultra-compact device the greenest DTT solution yet. The MFR-200 also comes with a nifty PS2-style, allowing it to be positioned horizontally or vertically.

We're assuming that the MFR-200 is a non-Scart version of the similarly specced MDR-200 (above) currently available from the TVonics website – there has not yet been an official image released of this new model. Check TVonics.com for more info.

Orange enter the triple-play fray

Mobile network provider and broadband ISP Orange have recently unveiled plans for a hybrid Freeview/IPTV package moulded in a similar vein to BT Vision and Tiscali TV.

A seven-day catch-up service along with enhanced EPG features are expected to be part of the service, which will provide basic Freeview access along with a range of on-demand content, presumably supplied via a broadband connection and routed to customers TV sets via an Orange Livebox, a la the BT Home Hub.

"Orange's digital TV service will allow viewers to get more from their TV by putting them in control of the best quality entertainment and enabling them to watch what they want, when they want, how they want," said the director of digital TV at Orange, Tim Pearson.

Orange promotional idents for the platform involve a number of cartoon characters who each represent a different aspect of the on-demand nature of the service. For example, a TV channel surfer, represents TV, a roadie-rocker type represents music, and a film buff complete with a clapperboard is representing movies.

"The characters are fun, warm and engaging and will guide viewers around a great lineup of film, TV, sport, entertainment and music from the comfort of their favourite armchair."

Orange compete with BT, Virgin Media, Sky and Tiscali in the rapidly condensing mass communications market, fighting over mobile and residential services, broadband and now digital TV.