Digital TV Blog

We also find out what bears get up to in the woods

In news which will come as a shock to absolutely no-one, Secretary of State for Business John Hutton has ordered Sky to reduce their stake in ITV from the current 17.9 per cent to less than half that amount at 7.5.

The statement released from the Department for Business reads:

'The Secretary of State has decided to make an adverse public interest finding, taking account of the Competition Commission's decision that this transaction results in a substantial lessening of competition within the UK market for all television.

'The Secretary of State has also decided to impose the remedies recommended by the Competition Commission to address the substantial lessening of competition identified in their report: divestment of BSkyB's shares in ITV down to a level below 7.5 [per cent] and behavioural undertakings from BSkyB requiring the company not to dispose of the shares to an associated person, nor to seek or accept representation on the board of ITV and not to reacquire shares in ITV.'

Thus ends one chapter of the tangled war of attrition between Sky and Virgin Media, with enough arcs and twists to be considered worthy of a Lost season. The Byzantine legal wrangling over the carriage fees farce is still ongoing, as is a separate but closely related joint complaint by BT, Setanta and Virgin over Sky's so-called 'vicious circle' of control over sports broadcasting. Ofcom are to decide whether the latter case should be referred to the Commission by the end of the month, but it is looking unlikely.

BT's beef is related to its battle for broadband – Ofcom regulation saw the telco having to open up it's network of phonelines to rival ISPs, including Sky. BT are currently market leaders in the broadband market, whereas Sky sit pretty atop of the pay TV pile.

Auntie to kick out the credit squeeze

Now, for a piece of news which should bring a smile to the Lawrence Fishburne-esque lips of the TV critic and Guardian mainstay Charlie Brooker, the BBC has pledged to put an end to 'credit squeezing' at the end of their programmes.

Last year the BBC decided to implement squeezing – shoehorning the credit roll of a programme into a third of the screen – in order to promote upcoming programmes on other BBC channels.

Whilst this may have been an admirable attempt to promote channels such as BBC Three and Four, and thereby promoting the benefits of digital TV for those who hadn't yet made the switchover, it also meant that the majority of the credits were illegible, to the chagrin of licence fee payers.

Roly Keating, the controller of BBC2 and acting controller of BBC1, has announced that the BBC was taking steps to address the problem, by asking producers to increase the font size of the credits so that the information was easier to read, and commissioning a redesign of the current format. "We are very sensitive about the problem… I am conscious that [credit squeezing] has led to shrinking illegibility," he said in a statement.

Mr Keating also said the corporation was considering publishing the closing credits on the internet for viewers who were unable to read them on screen.

Ramsay St. regulars emigrate from the Beeb

Five, who won the broadcast rights to long running hit soap Neighbours last year, have begun broadcasting a series of shorts in between programmes advertising the fact.

BBC's loss of Neighbours, after failing to come to an agreement with Neighbours producer Fremantle Media, was announced last year.

The BBC said in a statement: "[We have] had a long and fruitful relationship with Neighbours, which has transmitted on BBC1 for 21 years, and this has come to an end because of an unrealistic price demand." It was reported that Fremantle were asking for a sum in excess of £300million, a price tag which the BBC "[did] not believe that we could have justified to [our] viewers".

The news of the soap moving to Five was not received well by many loyal Ramsay Street fans, a number of whom still cannot receive the channel even after switching to digital. It was understood that ITV, whose boss Michael Grade first brought the soap to British screens when he was controller of the BBC back in 1986, was interested in buying up – the contracts were eventually passed to Five.

Fremantle Media and Five are both owned by broadcaster RTL Group.

Take-up of next-gen digital telly skyrockets

Recent Ofcom figures point again to the massive growth of digital TV in the UK, and Freeview in particular. The report shows that over 80% of UK households are using some form of digital TV viewing equipment on their main living room set, and that in the last year, some 8.6million Freeview set-top boxes or Digital-ready TV sets were sold.

Freeview's relative inexpense and accessibility is undoubtedly the platform's strongest point, and the advent of Freeview Playback – affording viewers Sky+ style recordability – has also seen take up increase. The recent report also claims that many viewers are upgrading secondary tellies in increasing numbers, with just under 12 million additional sets now converted to digital.

The number of UK households with digital TV on their main set is 21.7million, according to Ofcom. Sky currently has in excess of 8.4 million TV customers with a view to getting 10 million by 2010.

Virgin Media currently has over 3.4 million subscribers now signed up to its cable TV services, an increase of over 100,000 year-on-year, with over 190,000 customers using its V+ personal video recorder and HD service.

BT Vision has netted 100,000 customers since its inception, with a view to exceeding double this amount by 2010 – as of yet, there are no figures to show how many customers have been making use of its on demand services.

Angon furwe yn Kernow marpleg!

Here's a definition of irony – many residents of the county of Cornwall, which is home to BT's massive Satellite Earth Station at Goonhilly, are unable to receive Freeview in their homes.

For Kernow, the digital switchover can't come soon enough – residents in St. Austell, Par, Falmouth other towns have for years been unable to receive good signal, with many residents only able to watch telly via Sky. The undulating terrain and the heavily indented coastline have often been cited as geographical reasons for signal trouble in Cornwall, where in places, picture quality varies dramatically within distances as little as half a mile.

The transmitter at Redruth is at the moment undergoing extensive upgrades which, upon completion in time for the switchover in July 2009, will see the signal become approximately 8 times stronger, ironing out signal issues for good.

Bill Taylor, South West regional manager for Digital UK, said that "This is a mammoth task and we are working with a variety of media, agencies and community groups to let everyone know about the changes… The change is going to happen and people need to start looking at their options in Cornwall now so they are ready for the switch in 2009."

Sky gets the Arsenal

The forthcoming digital channel Arsenal TV, the official channel of the club, is now not going to be broadcast on Virgin Mediawhen it launches next Monday, due to capacity constrains.

The channel, operated by Virgin buddies Setanta, will temporarily only be available on Sky, channel 423.

Arsenal issued an apology on their official website: "Due to issues with Virgin Media's channel capacity Arsenal TV will not be available on Virgin Media at launch... Arsenal would like to apologise on behalf of Virgin for this delay and re-assure all supporters that we are working with Virgin and Setanta to resolve this issue as soon as possible. Arsenal TV will be available to Virgin customers in the future and the date will be publicised widely as soon as it is confirmed."

Anything Toucan do…

Broadband ISP, telco and IPTV supplier Tiscali are all set to add another ace to their already impressive hand – mobile phone services. After the acquisition of ISP Toucan last summer, Tiscali also inherited the Toucan mobile service, which piggybacks on the T-Mobile network.

This should certainly give the competition something to think about, especially Virgin Media, who have been able to comfortably claim the title of the UK's sole quad play provider. BT, which currently leads the UK broadband market and Sky, undoubtedly keen to built on the success of See Speak Surf in 2008, should also have pause for thought. Mobile-and-broadband suppliers Orange and O2 are both thought to be rolling out IPTV in the UK this year – news of Tiscali moving in on their home turf cant be welcome.

Tiscali are thought to be planning on launching the mobile phone service in the UK in the last quarter of 2008 – Tiscali chief executive Mary Turner was quoted in The Telegraph saying: "The assessment is not if, it is who and when. The business case has already been approved by the board."

This is the droid you're looking for

OK, so this isn't strictly a post on Digital TV, but when we heard this news story, we decided that it would be criminal not to go with it.

Remote control toy manufacturer NIKKO recently unveiled a commercial version of their R2-D2 home cinema system at this year's Consumer Electronics Show. A built in projector is mounted in the 'eye' at the top of his head, allowing for DVDs and digital photographs to be shown at a resolution of 800 x 600. An iPod dock is mounted into R2's front, with an FM broadcast function, and best of all, you can direct him around your living room using the Millennium Falcon-shaped remote control, making him spin around 360 degrees, allowing you to project images and films virtually anywhere.

The droid, pictured, was shown off at the last CES, but was only a prototype - due to the huge amount of interest received, NIKKO tweaked the design to make it more consumer friendly. On sale now on Play.com your very own the R2 unit is available for several million Republic Credits, which converts to around £2,000.

Motorola / BT + V + X (Box) x HD = £££

BT have just announced a deal inked with computer monolith Microsoft, which will allow BT Vision customers to sync an Xbox 360 to the IPTV box and the Home Hub, effectively turning the games machine into a second BT Vision box – gamers will be able to view the BT Vision on-demand and Freeview content on another TV in the house.

BT have also said that they will be launching an HD platform next year, and have appointed mobile phones manufacturer Motorola, who according to BT Vision chief Dan Marks have “extensive experience in IPTV” and have a previous working relationship with Microsoft. When this platform is released, customers will be able to pay to download new titles from the Xbox Live Marketplace in shiny happy HD format.

Last September, we mentioned how Sony had announced the development of their HD-ready Play TV platform for the PS3, allowing viewers to record one programme on Freeview whilst watching another, using the PS3's hard drive (40GB or 60GB depending on which one you bought) to record programmes to. The versions of the Xbox 360 on sale in the UK, Premium and Elite have 20GB and 120GB sized hard drives respectively.

The deal with BT is part of Microsoft's plan to extend Xbox take-up throughout Europe, with similar deals being made with Deutsche Telekom in Germany, T-Online in France and Swisscom in Switzerland.

As the Xbox 360 is the second most popular 'seventh-gen' console, this agreement is mutually beneficial for BT; "we are able to potentially expand our BT Vision customer base by tapping into the popularity of Xbox 360."

Regulator chooses to "take the money and run".

As we welcome in the new year, its sad to see that the future of HD on the Freeview platform looks ever more doubtful. Ofcom's Philip Rutman has been quoted as saying that "There is no compelling case for the spectrum to be set aside for specific purposes," which can almost certainly be taken to be read as 'spectrum will not be set aside for terrestrial HD.'

The quote comes from electrical retail news website ERT Weekly, who accuse Ofcom of 'taking the money', by effectively allowing the majority of the broadcast spectrum to be bought up by the highest bidders, despite Channel 4 and the BBC already committed to broadcasting content in HD before 2012.

For HD fans, the only non-subscription solution available looks likely to be the forthcoming Freesat service jointly run by the BBC and ITV, which promises over 80 digital channels and the ability to upgrade to HD for an additional one-off cost.

But the problem with Freesat is that a satellite dish is required to receive the service – for structural or aesthetic reasons, not everybody can or will want to fix a dish to the side of their home, and so a Freeview version would be the ideal solution for people who either can't have or don't want Freesat.

The many manufactures, including Sony, Samsung and Toshiba, who are behind the HDforAll campaign also potentially stand to lose out on revenue from HD TV sets that would not necessarily be purchased is a high-definition terrestrial solution could not be worked out.