Digital TV Blog

Ofcom OK HD for DTT

High-definition Freeview channels could be appearing on British screens as early as 2009, thanks to an Ofcom ruling, which sees a percentage of the broadcast spectrum set aside for HD Freeview, despite pay-TV leaders Sky and Virgin repeatedly pooh-poohing the idea. Ofcom has consistently argued that broadcasters could launch HD using their existing allocation of spectrum, BBC and ITV along with support from the HDforAll group have lobbied the regulator to set aside more spectrum for Freeview HD.

Ed Richards, head of Ofcom, had this to say: "Our proposals to upgrade Digital Terrestrial Television represent a major opportunity to build on its success with wider, richer and more varied television services, including the potential for HDTV to be made available to millions of people free to air."

The new proposals will see broadcasters utilising existing radio spectrum on the Freeview platform to launch new HD channels by 2009 – both the BBC and Channel 4 have said that they intend to broadcast channels in HD over DTT eventually. The Beeb has already carried out a successful trial of an HD channel, and C4 should be set to launch their HD service on Sky by the end of the year.

The current aim is to get four HD channels up and running on Freeview by the time of the London Olympics in 2012, so that the British public can watch it on HD, and therefore avoiding a potentially embarrassing situation where viewers from across the world would be able to watch the games at a better quality than those in the host nation would.

Ofcom has stressed that those who do not want to upgrade to HDTV can keep their existing Freeview equipment, amid concerns from viewers who wanted to avoid a costly digital solution would have to fork out again for new gear. Only customers who want HD need to upgrade to receive the new channels.

Sportscaster raises £90m from shareholders for premiership putsch

Setanta Sports has snapped up the rights to broadcast the home and away qualifying matches for the 2010 World Cup and Euro 2012, whilst ITV will be showing only the home games and the BBC get show the 2010 finals.

After the humiliating exit from next year's European championship last week, England have been afforded a chance to revenge against Croatia in the upcoming qualifier.

England's defeat to Croatia captured an audience of 12.3m for the BBC last Wednesday, so the grudge match should prove to be lucrative for Setanta, who after netting £90m from issuing shares to investors, need to make good returns – last year, Setanta managed to accumulate £213 from private equity backers, which it used to secure live broadcast rights for a portion of the Premier League games. Setanta is currently not expected to turn a profit until mid 2009.

The broadcaster plans to spend the money on buying up rights to England international and FA Cup games, increasing its coverage of English football. So far, Setanta has around 400,000 subscribers in the UK and Ireland, and is set to launch the long-awaited Setanta Sports News channel on Sky and Virgin this Thursday.

Ofcom report sheds light on DTT progress

Freeview has just announced that there are now 14 million homes in the UK which use Freeview-branded equipment to receive digital terrestrial TV, reinforcing its position as the most popular digital TV choice in the country. According to a recent Ofcom report, over 80% of people moving away from analogue are opting to buy a Freeview digital box or a digital TV with Freeview built-in (iDTV).

"Digital switchover has now begun and we're delighted that the majority of people going digital for the first time are choosing Freeview for their home; we're also seeing significant numbers of people choosing Freeview for their second and third TV sets, in their kitchen or bedroom," said Ilse Howling, general manager of Freeview.

Those who bought the first generation of Freeview receivers are now moving them into bedrooms and kitchens are more advanced versions of set top boxes become available.

"The evolution of the service with Freeview Playback, our own digital TV recorder brand which allows you to pause, rewind and record live TV also means that we continue to offer more to our customers while maintaining our simple proposition of great free TV."

"We're now in more than 14mn homes, and being the most popular digital TV service in the UK is a fantastic achievement in just five years since our launch. This is primarily down to the simplicity of Freeview, its great channel line-up and one-off payment with no need for a subscription.

Sroomadelica, Thamesbeat, and The Scene With No Name coming to Sky!

Anyone remember the New Rock Revolution and the Third Summer of Love? Weekly music mag the NME is set to launch a digital TV channel this Friday, available on Sky. Considering that the NME traditionally goes on sale on a Wednesday, today would have been a more apt launch date, but what can ya do?

The channel will be jointly run by IPC - the owner of the paper which also runs Nuts TV – and CSC Media Group, who run channels including Chart Show TV, Scuzz, Bliss and the True Movie channels.

NMETV will cover new and upcoming bands, featuring interviews and breaking news stories from NME.com, Run downs of the various charts, including the NME chart, the album chart and the Radar playlist will also be regular features. Exclusive footage shot on the road with bands on the various NME Tours and club nights will also be regularly broadcast.

"We've over 20 years of music broadcast experience and are proud that our channels are still growing in viewership and share. We're sure NMETV will be as popular and enjoy similar success," said the CSC chief executive, David Docherty.

Neu Musical Express publishing director, Paul Cheal, said that the NME channel would be a great addition to the Sky line-up and would greatly appeal to NME readers: "Increasingly our mantra at NME is that our audience of 15- to 24-year-olds are incredibly promiscuous when it comes to media consumption so as a media owner you need to have an offering on every platform."

Asides from its print-based format, the NME has a digital alter ego in the form of the aforementioned NME.com, which regularly racks up several thousands of hits a day. There is no news as of yet whether NMETV will follow the footsteps of Nuts TV and be broadcast on Freeview.

Quid per gig with Sharp's new Playback DVR

Sharp has upgraded its Freeview DVR range to allow for full Freeview Playback support with its new TU-R160HA set top box. Costing £160 British pounds, the new Sharp box comes with a 160GB hard drive allowing you to store the equivalent of 80 hours of digital TV, or £2 an hour, if you get our drift.

Freeview Playback, often referred to as 'Freeview +' gives Freeview customers all the skip, pause, fast-forward and record-ability of a Sky+ box, and come with fully programmable EPGs as well as the Series Link feature, which allows you to program the box to automatically record an entire series of Heroes, X Factor, Ugly Betty or whatever takes your fancy. This kid of functionality is old news to Sky+ owners, who can queue up an entire series of Ross Kemp on Gangs at their whim.

The Sharp TU-R160HA features all this plus 'Chase Playback', which allows you to start watching something minutes after you've begun recording it, thanks to its twin tuners, which also, of course, allow you to watch one programme while recording another.

Compulsory archery practice on Sunday afternoons to be reinstated.

Switchover is not due to happen in the Meridian regions until 2012, whereas all of France looks set to be digitally enabled for 2011. If digital switchover occurs in France before it does Over Here, Meridian residents will undoubtedly suffer. According to a report by the National Audit Office (NAO); "there may be interference with the current digital terrestrial signal in parts of southern England as a consequence of high-powered digital transmissions from France."

Not missing a trick to lay into the current administration, Jeremy Hunt, the Shadow Culture secretary, is quoted in today's Times saying: "Bad planning and delays by Government has meant that there will be no time to learn lessons from the pilot help scheme. The result could be thousands of vulnerable people without television."

However 2011 is a long way off, and there's no reason why Meridian viewers can't get sorted out in time – you can pick up a Freeview box for as little as £10, or splash out and get a receiver from TVonics of Humax, both of whom make products which look nice under your TV and give you all the pause, rewind, record functionality of a Sky+ box.

Back of the net?

BT Vision, the biggest IPTV service in the UK has racked up a sizeable number of subscribers since its launch last year – 60,000 since the end of 2006.

BT has said that the figures were "in line with expectations", despite the company initially projecting a target of 100,000 by the end of 2007.

Current figures from BT show that the average take-up rate of new customers is somewhere between 5,000 and 6,000 households a week, which means that if this rate does not significantly increase, BT will miss their target.

In a post published on The Register today, an unnamed BT spokesperson is quoted saying: "When we said the end of 2007, we of course meant the end of the financial year."

In other recent news, BT have also given customers the option to connect their V-Box themselves for a reduced fee of £30. Costs for the box and the engineers installation fee are typically covered by a one-off £60 charge. Dan Marks, BT Vision CEO, said:

"For customers who don’t want or need an engineer visit, Self Install makes BT Vision an even more attractive choice – it gives all the benefits of our next-generation digital TV service for an incredible up front price of just £30."

The Self Install option comes with a pair of powerline adaptors, which plug into wall power sockets and carry the signal from the BT Home Hub to the V-box across the domestic power circuit, offering customers great choice over where they can set up their digital TV equipment in the home.

Chart Show Channels up sticks

The music channels Bliss, Flaunt and Scuzz have all left Virgin Media's cable TV line-up, following the failure of an agreement to materialise between owners Chart Show Channels Media and the cable group.

Pop and chart channels Bliss and Flaunt along with rock and metal channel Scuzz, once owned by Sky, are wholly owned by the CSC Media Group and all underwent a revamp following the purchase, with Scuzz in particular focussing more on broadcasting live performances of bands.

Virgin Media are apparently eschewing the CSC channels in favour of focussing their own on-demand content: "We are continuing to harmonise our Digital TV offering and the removal of these channels forms part of that process. All these channels were in our XL TV package and any XL customers can get unlimited access to Music Video On Demand for no extra cost. This service allows the viewer to choose from over 1000 music videos, and play them when they want."

November the 29th on cable and satellite

Setanta Sports and Virgin Media have announced that their sports news channel will launch on November 29.

The 24-hour news channel, produced by ITN, will be available on all Virgin Media TV Sizes and free-to-air on Sky, and promises to offer fresh headlines every 20 minutes interspersed with interactive debates and reports from "fan correspondents".

"This channel represents a new age for sports fans in this country," says Malcolm Wall of Virgin. "We're confident the energy will provide a fresh approach to sports news in the UK and by putting fans at the very heart of the channel, we think it will give us an edge with viewers."

'User-generated content' may be one of those nasty buzzphrases – much like 'multimedia' and 'interactive' were in the early 90s – doing the rounds at the moment, but many of the enduring features of the Soccer AM institution, such as Stranger on the Sofa and Third Eye could equally be considered as adding to a 'non-passive user intertextal experience' – Virgin Media could be onto a winner here.

Geoff Hill, the channel's editor in chief, explained: "We want Setanta Sports News to be fun and engaging for the nation's sports fans. Viewers will get the sports news that matters delivered in a thorough, concise and accurate way, but this channel will be much more than a rolling sports news service - we want the added value of passionate input from fans. We aim to be alongside them at every major sporting event in the UK."

Ever since the Great Sky Channel Exodus, Virgin have placed the launch of a sports news service at the top of their to-do list, alongside purchasing exclusive content for the launch of Virgin 1 whilst the carriage fees dispute was meted out in the courtrooms. Setanta Sports are, of course, direct rivals with Sky in terms of football coverage, and ITN have close ties to ITV, who, following the recent Competition Commission ruling will either be shot of the controversial Sky stake or see the size of the stake reduced.

Setanta Sports News will appear on Virgin channel 518, with An EPG position on digital satellite has yet to be confirmed. No news yet if the channel will appear on Freeview or become part of the Setanta Sports back for non-cable and sat customers.

November the 6th 2008 slated for Caledonian Changeover

Even though Whitehaven has still not fully switched over to digital just yet – although that's due on the 14th, less than two weeks time – a date has already been set for the beginning of the analogue signal shutdown.

The Scottish switchover will officially begin on the 6th of November next year, with continued switchover rollout occurring in south-west Scotland in 2009, and most other parts of Scotland in 2010. It will conclude with the analogue shutdown of the Black Hill transmitter area, encompassing Glasgow, in early 2011.

Viewers are being urged to get set for the change through a national campaign launched in Glasgow by Digital UK, the body leading the process, following some confusion among Whitehaven residents over the last couple of weeks. Despite the intense promotion from Digital UK and electronics retailers, some viewers were left unable to receive BBC2.

Digital UK aren't wasting time getting Scottish residents prepared for the digital change. Over the next few coming weeks, every home in the Scottish and Grampian regions will receive information packs on the next big switchover and how to get set up for it.

Official figures suggest that currently roughly 50% of Scots homes have already converted and digital-ready. Paul Hughes of Digital UK has said that the process will be "a huge challenge" for his organisation.