Archive for the ‘BT Vision’ Category

The UK’s leading subscription-based sports broadcasters have agreed equal deals with the Scottish Premier League, with both Sky and ESPN paying a combined £80 million for 30 exclusive live games each.

According to The Guardian, the new deal runs until the end of the 2016-17 season, and also ensures the continuation of the current league format, despite campaigning from fans for a larger league. This also means that the always feisty four Old Firm derbies per season will remain in place until at least the end of the new TV deal.

Speaking about the door closing, for now, on a significantly larger SPL, the top division’s chief executive Neil Doncaster said: “There is no room to manoeuvre in terms of expanding. Fourteen teams might potentially work in terms of having a split league and retaining four Old firm games. Maybe. That would be feasible.”

“But it has never been feasible to have 16, 18 or 20 because you automatically mean going to one home game and one away. We think that will take £20m out of Scottish football. That is a massive amount of money per season, in terms of lost gate and TV revenue. The lost gate revenue is not to be underestimated. So going to 16, 18 or 20 – financially – is impossible.”

The new deal is said to be bringing in an extra £3 million per year for the SPL.

Sky, Virgin Media and BT Vision customers can all add Sky Sports and ESPN to their digital TV subscriptions.

Channel 4 has tweaked its 4OD catch-up service, and officially launched the revamp today.

4OD can be accessed at any time online, but now users can activate ‘My 4OD’, giving them the option of adding programme preferences and creating personalised playlists. This new aspect of the website will send reminders to users of ‘My 4OD’, letting them know that their favourites are due to air.

In order to activate ‘My 4OD’, users will need to register various details including date of birth.

The revamp also includes improved full-page viewing and search, as well as a recommendation service.
Sarah Milton, Head of VoD at Channel 4, said: “We have refined and optimised the design to ensure viewers get the best experience from the wealth of content Channel 4 has to offer.”

“We have over 5,000 hours of archive programming available on the Channel4.com 4oD service, and the redesign makes it even easier for users to browse our offering.”

According to The Telegraph, Channel 4 is hoping to tailor the advert selection for particular demographics by utilising the information from ‘My 4OD’.

4OD is still operating in the shadow of BBC iPlayer, although The Guardian reports impressive viewing figures of 3.4m for Channel 4’s service, which offers on demand episodes of popular shows such as Hollyoaks, 8 Out Of 10 Cats and The I.T. Crowd. 4OD, like its BBC rival, can be accessed on TV at home through Virgin Media and BT Vision packages.

Digital TV giant Sky has fixed the prices paid by customers, in a move designed to aid families during tight financial times.

News reported by website Cable.co.uk confirmed that the price freeze runs from September 1st this year to August 31st 2012, which will be welcome news for Sky customers at a time when UK residents are seeing other bills continue to rise.

Sky’s leading rival Virgin Media is, conversely, increasing monthly line rental from August 1st, and its connection fees are expected to rise, whilst BT Vision has already bumped up landline charges this year.

Managing Director of Sky’s customer group, Andrea Zappia, said: “With subscription prices frozen for at least a year, our customers can look forward to getting more than ever from Sky.”

Sky has also recently worked to streamline its service, after announcing that the viewing packs will be simplified, and Sky Mobile TV and Sky Player have both been combined to form the new on demand service Sky Go.

The hugely popular on demand catch-up service BBC iPlayer is now available in full to BT Vision customers.

Back in November last year, the BBC announced plans to bring the iPlayer to BT Vision, and TechRadar has confirmed the news that the complete service is now active. Some BBC content was already available through BT Vision’s TV Replay, but now the IPTV provider’s customers can access over 400 hours of BBC TV and 1,000 hours of BBC radio.

BT Retail’s chief exec of TV and online services said: “The launch of BBC iPlayer on BT Vision adds to the enormous range of quality entertainment already available to our customers.”

“We are really excited to be partnering with the BBC to bring BBC iPlayer to our customers.”

BBC iPlayer gives UK viewers the chance to watch the latest episodes of popular BBC shows such as Eastenders, Have I Got News For You, The Apprentice and Top Gear, as well as UK radio favourites including The Chris Moyles Show.

BT Vision provides digital TV through a BT Broadband connection in the home, and offers a wide range of Freeview channels, as well as the option to pay for movies and sport, and the catch-up service now includes programmes from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5.

Cable giant Virgin Media has officially announced plans to offer breathtaking superfast broadband speeds of up to 100Mbps to UK web surfers, which is roughly 20 times the average speed currently achieved.

Virgin Media has confirmed that this speed will be offered to over 12 million UK homes, and it will dwarf even the very fastest speeds advertised by rivals like Sky and BT.

This continues to demonstrate Virgin Media’s dominance in the market of broadband development, and the new broadband speed of 100Mbps is an astonishing 200 times faster than the very first speeds of up to 0.5Mbps offered 10 years ago.

So what exactly can we do with this kind of dizzying broadband speed?

Well, assuming that you can actually get the full 100Mbps (which will depend greatly on a number of factors including the amount of people online and the website you are using) then you could ‘potentially’:

• download an album of music in 5 seconds
• download a TV programme in 30 seconds
• download a movie in 90 seconds
• download an HD movie in 7 minutes

Virgin Media has also stated that, following trials of 100Mbps and 200Mbps, the new superfast speeds prove truly remarkable when several members of one household are simultaneously using the web. Virgin Media is convinced that its new speeds will particularly impress in this area.

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Freeview customers will be pleased with today’s result, as Sky and Top Up TV have reached an agreement that will see leading sports channels Sky Sports 1 and Sky Sports 2 available through the free-to-air digital TV platform.

Sky Sports itself will, of course, not be free. According to the BBC, customers can subscribe to either channel for £22.99 a month, or the pair as a package for £31.99.

The recent Ofcom ruling that saw Sky forced to lower its wholesale cost of Sky Sports has led to rival broadcasters offering the channels at cut price. BT Vision recently announced its own price plan to customers.

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This autumn, Sky subscribers will see the arrival of three new entertainment channels, provided by new broadcaster Electric Sofa.

The three channels will consist of a film channel dedicated to British-made movies and “rarely-seen gems”, a general movies channel screening big-budget flicks, premieres and classics and a channel devoted to general entertainment programming.

According to Digital Spy, the channels will be available free-to-air as of November 1st, with Electric Sofa confirming that the channels will also eventually be made available on other platforms and online.

Electric Sofa co-manager Ursula Adeane said: “We are actively identifying and acquiring new material to ensure that Electric Sofa will be the viewer’s favourite place to go for original, fresh films and entertainment.”

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Following recent confirmation that BT Vision will be offering its sports enthusiast customers Sky Sports 1 and 2 at cut price thanks to an Ofcom ruling, Sky has made an audacious attempt to throw a digital spanner in the works by hiking its own retail prices.

The Guardian has confirmed that Sky has made the surprise move, which will essentially result in BT Vision running at a loss for every single customer that signs up to their recently announced cut-price Sky Sports package.

In order to explain…

Ofcom recently ruled that Sky must lower its wholesale prices – the cost it charges other broadcasters to show its own channels. However, the enforced reduction is intrinsically linked with Sky’s actual retail prices – the amount it charges its own customers.

The result means that if Sky raises the prices for its own customers, the wholesale price will automatically be pushed up as well.

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Following our previous story in May, an agreement has been reached and signed between satellite giants Sky and BT Vision which will see the latter broadcasting the popular flagship sports channels Sky Sports 1 and 2.

BT Vision has announced that its customers will be able to order and view the channels from 1st August 2010, allowing them to watch exclusive sports coverage such as the England away qualifying matches for Euro 2012 and The Winter Ashes cricket tests between England and Australia.

With the new Premier League season starting on August 14th, and Sky Sports continuing its dominance of Live Premier League broadcasting, the offical start date comes just in time for avid football fans.

It also leaves enough time for the wounds of the South African World Cup to heal…

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BT Vision will be adding over 20 new films to its Bolly and Beyond video on demand service.

Cable.co.uk reports that an agreement has been reached between BT Vision and UTV Motion Pictures, with titles such as Race, Fashion, Kaminey and Wake Up Sid heading the list of Indian and Bollywood movies that are set to be included.

BT Vision digital TV subscribers, who also get home phone and fibre optic broadband, will be able to watch up to 5 UTV films every month through pay-per-view or on demand.

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