Digital TV Blog

Satcaster fed up with regulatory heel draggage

Sky have temporarily put the kibosh on their proposed Picnic digital TV service, following the non-emergence of the Ofcom report that was due to be published this spring.

“The blunt truth is that Ofcom has spent 18 months looking at our proposals and there is no end in sight. The Picnic team have done everything they can to prepare for launch and there’s nothing left to be achieved until Ofcom makes its mind up,” said a Sky spokesperson, who added that “no business can go on like that.”

With Picnic, Sky had intended to replace its current line up of channels on the Freeview platform – that’s Sky News, Sky Sports News and Sky Three – with premium Sky Movies and Sky Sports content, and the flagship channel Sky One. Picnic would be available either on its own, or as part of a bundle deal including fixed-line calls and broadband services in the same vein to its See Speak Surf bundles, and would require potential customers to purchase a new MPEG4 compatible set-top box.

The proposal was initially submitted back in February 2007, on the eve of the missing channel hoo-hah with Virgin Media, and prompted a response from rival providers Setanta and Top-Up TV.

Cable Chameleon

Living TV is to go behind the closed doors of Boy George’s life in a new series called ‘Living With…‘. The cable channel will follow the former Culture Club singer to give viewers a snapshot of his day-to-day life, filming both his mother and his friends. The series will also film former Big Brother contestant Jade Goody as she battles with advanced cervical cancer.

Living TV’s director of Programmes, Claudia Rosencrantz said: “We have been incredibly sensitive over this. It was an extraordinary coincidence that we were filming already when it happened.

“It was clear when the whole Big Brother thing happened that there was more to come from Jade. I never thought she was a racist and thought the time had come where our viewers wanted to know what had happened to her. And then this happened.”

Rosencrantz made clear that Goody had set clear parameters within which Living was allowed to film. The show is just one of several in Living’s autumn line-up of programmes offering “trashy glamour”. The channel, which celebrates its 15th anniversary this month, will also be broadcasting Dirty Dancing: The Time Of Your Life, America’s Next Top Model and Grey’s Anatomy.

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Nearly half of the UK’s cable viewers use VoD

According to Virgin Media, roughly 1.6m of their digital cable television customers, representing nearly half of its TV customer base, make use of the Virgin Central VoD (Video on Demand) services. This includes pay per view content such as movies and music videos as well as content offered on the 7 day catch up service and the BBC iPlayer channel.

The company, which has seen net TV customer additions of 24,800 in the second quarter of 2008, reported that average views of video on demand content per month were 24, compared to 14 during the same period last year.

“During the quarter, we launched the BBC’s iPlayer service on our VoD platform offering hundreds of hours of BBC ‘catch-up’ content,” a Virgin spokesperson explained. “Virgin Media is the first TV platform to make BBC iPlayer available in full screen picture quality directly to its 3.4m digital TV subscribers. Developments like this give VoD a new impetus and help establish on-demand as a genuinely mainstream TV service.”

Virgin also noted that take up of its high definition PVR package V+ is used by nearly half a million of its customers (424,900) or some 13% of its digital TV customer base.

Doctor Who and Dot Cotton top downloads

The BBC iPlayer service on Virgin Media saw more than 10m viewers make use of its service in June, according to the first batch of figures released by the quad play company. The June figures are significantly up from the 1.4 million views of BBC content via Virgin when the service was launched in May.

Virgin Media, the first Digital TV platform to give the BBC iPlayer catch-up service its own stand alone menu, managed to attract half as many viewings as the iPlayer website did in June.

Pressing the ‘red button’ on remotes whilst watching a BBC channel on Virgin Media TV brings up the iPlayer menu, without the user having to directly access the internet. Among the top viewings were repeats of EastEnders, Doctor Who and the frankly disturbing kids show In the Night Garden.

Malcolm Wall, the chief executive of content at Virgin Media, said that the figures underlined the “continued success of our on-demand offering,” a sentiment echoed by Rahul Chakkara, the BBC controller for TV platforms, who said: “The initial success on Virgin Media underlines the multiplatform appeal of the BBC iPlayer proposition.”

The iPlayer, which is available to all UK viewers who have an internet connection, has been running fully since Christmas and pulls in an average of 1.5 million users each week.

BT give live footy away for free

BT is offering customers free access to Setanta Sports 1 when they sign up for one of its BT Vision packages, in an attempt to win back ground from its competitors in the battle for the broadband market.

Customers will be given Setanta free when they take out a BT Vision bronze, silver or gold package starting at £14 a month – half the cost of Sky’s equivalent. Each package includes the Freeview channels, a digital video recorder and TV Replay, and customers can opt into a number of viewing packs, depending on which package they chooser. These include Kids, Music, Standard Sport and Picture Box, BT Vision’s movie service.

With the addition of Setanta Sports 1, customers can tune into 46 live Barclays Premier League matches, as well as live action from the Scottish Premier League and every round of the FA Cup. Football fans will also have access to ‘near-live’ footage of 242 Premier League matches. The world’s major sporting tournaments will also be broadcast, including the home nations World Cup qualifiers, live US PGA Tour Golf and World Championship Boxing.

Scottish football fans are also in for a treat, as BT Vision announced yesterday that it had signed a deal with Setanta to show 28 on-demand games in addition to the 60 live matches already available to subscribers.

Analysts say that customers are more wary of signing up to pay-TV subscription packages in the light of the current credit crunch. In a press release, BT Vision said “we offer customers the chance to save money by giving them the choice of when they pay and what they pay for.”

In a challenge to rivals Sky and Virgin Media, BT Vision’s Chief Executive Dan Marks said “Our compelling offer… proves you don’t have to pay sky-high prices to watch top-flight football, and our packages offer so much more value than [rival] TV packages on Sky or Virgin… We now have more to watch than any other on-demand TV service in the country”.

Well, sort of.

This just in from the guys at Setanta Sports - the following pre-season friendlies and qualifiers have been announced, including the dates for the Vodacom Challenge mini-tournament games between title holders Orlando Pirates, Kaizer Cheifs and Manchester United. Please note that one of the dates is tob be confirmed, and that all fixtures are, naturally, subject to change.

Sat 12/7 Tranmere v Liverpool 15:00 LFC TV

Thu 17/7 EB / Streymur v Man City (Faroe Islands) UEFA Cup 19:00 Setanta Sports 1

Fri 18/7 Southampton v Celtic 19:45 Celtic TV

Sat 19/7 Kaizer Chiefs v Man United 14:30 Setanta Sports 1

Sat 19/7 Barnet v Arsenal 15:00 Arsenal TV

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Personal Services Required gets personal

RDF Media, the TV production company that sparked a row after falsely portraying the Queen as storming out of a photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz when, in fact, she had been walking in, has again been accused of misrepresenting the truth. Participants in the Channel 4 reality show Personal Services Required claimed that the production company made them look “ridiculous.”

The show films families seeking to employ a housekeeper, and follows them through the recruitment process. Headhunters Gabriella and Danny Grasso claim that when looking for a housekeeper, they were wrongly depicted as offering someone a job below the minimum wage. They are worried that the slur will have a negative impact on their business and are considering suing for libel.

“For us this was a serious process, but RDF belittled us and tried to make us look ridiculous on television,” said Danny Grasso. “They’ve given us unfair representation and made us look like people who are exploiting other people for entertainment. Had I known about them and their reputation, I wouldn’t have agreed to it.”

Well, the whole BBC/Queen/photoshoot/apology fiasco was pretty big news last year Danny, and Wife Swap is one of Channel 4’s biggest pulls. RDF Media are also responsible for shows such as Location Location Location, Rock School, and Shipwrecked. You might have heard of them. You might want to check them out.

The Grassos were approached by RDF, when they posted an advert for a housekeeper on the website Gumtree. They initially declined the offer because they were living in Dubai at the time, but later accepted when RDF offered to fly the couple and their 13-year-old daughter back to Britain first-class. Three housekeepers were interviewed and filmed at the couple’s five-bedroom home near Flitwick, Bedfordshire, having been chosen by the production company, supposedly on the basis of their suitability and experience.

37-year-old Danny Grasso said: “We were told the housekeepers would be qualified and vetted, so it would be a service to us. But when they sent in the first one it was clear they had chosen people who were ‘entertaining’.”

The couple ended up employing Wendy-Anne Passmore, but at the end of last week’s programme she said she doubted whether she was being paid even the minimum wage, at £250 a week. However Danny insists this is a ludicrous claim. “We were offering separate living accommodation and food with all utility bills paid; there’s no way that’s below the minimum wage.”

However, RDF maintains the episode gave “a fair and accurate representation of what happened”. Another applicant for the position of housekeeper called the couple “chavvy Lottery winners” to the camera. The last RDF fiasco, which showed the Queen apparently storming out of a photo shoot, prompted the BBC and ITV to stop commissioning productions from the company for a limited period. It also led to the dismissal of RDF’s creative director Stephen Lambert and the controller of BBC1 Peter Fincham.

1080p for all, at last

Word on the street is that since the launch of Freesat a couple of months ago, take up of HD TV equipment has really started to take off. According to sales figures, there are approximately 10 million HD TV sets currently in use in British households, half a million of which are being used in conjunction with the Sky HD service, which, incidentally, is set to take a price tumble tomorrow.

Virgin, which has proudly boasted its own V+ HD digital TV service since inception, also commands a portion of this figure. However, it is thought until now, the majority of HD Ready TV sets have been purchases with the purposes of enjoying next-gen home entertainment in the form of Blu-Ray and HD DVD players, not to mention the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Yes, and the Wii, although we realise it’s technically not a next-gen console…

Anyway. Just as Freeview and Freeview Playback drove the increase in sales of switchover-ready Digital TV sets, Freesat looks all set to do the same for HD-compatible kit. Like Freeview, the main selling point of the Freesat package is the one-off install fee, no subscription deal which sees punters able to sign up for a whole bunch of HD channels all in one go.

If that wasn’t enough HD access to keep people happy, the BBC are reportedly trialling HD transmissions over Freeview, using the Guildford transmitter as a test bed, putting paid to rumours that HD on Freeview would never happen. The broadcast utilised the newfangled DVB-T2 spec, which apparently offers 30% more capacity than the standard DVB-T, on which the existing Freeview equipment runs.

Justin Mitchell, head of the DVB-T2 development team at the BBC, said: “This is a big step forward in enabling the introduction of full HD terrestrial on Freeview by the end of 2009.”

The DVB-T2 specification means that Freeview punters will almost certainly have to buy a new set-top box, which prompts the question why bother waiting when you could just shell out for Freesat now? Well, the problem with Freesat is that it requires a dish to be fitted to the side of a property, and for structural and contractual reasons, this isn’t an option.

2009 is also well in advance of the 2012 switchover and just in time for the Olympic Games, meaning that every British household ought to be able to see that high-watermark acheivement of graphic design that is the London 2012 Olympics logo in super-high 1080 progressive scan resolution.

BBC iPlayer and 4oD come bundled gratis

BT Vision has introduced a monthly subscription for its previously free on-demand digital TV content.

BT Vision who want to make use of the 7-day catch up service now have to sign up for the new £3 a month Replay service for their IPTV demand/Freeview hybrid. However, the subscription also covers the 4oD and BBC iPlayer online services, allowing viewers to enjoy on-demand content on big, widescreens in the living room as opposed to grainy, pixellated flatscreen monitor displays.

Virgin Media, which also offers all its TV customers free catch up TV from the BBC and 4oD said it had no plans to start charging its customers for this content – bearing in mind that Virgin who already charge a premium for their souped-up cable service can probably afford to absorb the cost of on-demand downloads.

Endemol conjure an affront to taste and proper geometry

We all knew that this time round Big Brother was going to come down hard on those who broke the rules (clue: don’t be a massive racist) but this is taking the michael just a little.

Pictures of the new garden area have just been posted up on msn.com a day before the ninth British series of the genre-defining reality TV show is unleashed on Channel 4 and it looks like Endemol let the design team who came up with the 2012 London Olympic logo loose on the set. In short, it looks horrible – jaunty, colliding angles and various shades of sick-inducing green, with an oversized Dali-esque ashtray placed in the middle. So the housemates, and by extension the viewers, have already been punished by this aesthetic offence before having committed any sin.

Those who do will find themselves locked up in the BB chokey – the ‘jail’ is also incorporated into the garden area of the house, so that those incarcerated will have to suffer the added humiliation of watching the other housemates having a good time, enjoying the weather and cooling off in the pool – given that the sun will be shining directly into the cramped cell at some point in the day, we reckon its going to get pretty hot in there.

The interior of the cell is also decorated with pictures of Chucky from Childsplay-style eyeless doll’s heads intended to creep the inmates out, and features a two-way mirror reflecting the endless heads and ensuring no privacy for the captives. It’s a given that all housemates will undergo proper psychological profiling before entering to prevent any full on claustrophobia induced wig-outs, but is this too much? Maybe. We’ve not yet met any of the housemates, and some of them are bound to be excruciatingly annoying wastes of matter.

Say what you like about Big Brother, but the show certainly has a knack for extracting the inner misanthrope from pretty much everyone.