I would agree with that: you do have to look carefully at the alternatives before committing to a 12-month contract with any provider. If we ever bothered to use our landline, I'd probably consider switching. As it is, the most important part of our package is the Internet connection, and I am very happy with that. I'm also happy with the cable TV Starter Package, of which no provider provides a near equivalent at a comparable cost.

Can you have the telewest starter pack of tv without commiting to a telewest telephone line ?

Certainly when I last enquired, no you couldn't. If you didn't want the telephone line you had to have the top tier package for the TV. Of course, things may differ in different franchise areas - I'm covered by the old Cable London service here.

make you own mind up, just badly managed, 3 times they told me no way no how would my old sony vtx500 work with TOTV and i'd have to buy a shiny new thomson, when i did i thought i would try the viewing card in the sony so see what would happen, no supprises, worked

Hmmm you sound like Blue 100......

I think it is a rip off because of the way the channels share slots. None give you access to the full broadcasting period of the channel. UKTV Gold, Cartoon Network & E4 are all 24 hour channels now aren't they? However, they don't broadcast for that. And why is bloomberg taking up one of the slots, when it is a very extreme minority news channel, that concentrates on shares which appeal to very few in the country.

I personally think it needs little backing; the statement above. £7.99+£20 set up for a very downrate service is disgraceful. Its clearly expensive for what you are getting, in comparison to other services. I think the family pack on Sky is only £10 more per month, which isn't really that much more is it? Yet you probably get about 300 channels more. Hmmmm, I wonder which is better. £8 for 10 channels each timesharing the space allocated (therefore not even 10 channels in reality), or 100+ decent channels and the crappy ones too (which probably have the same appeal as the likes of Bloomberg to people anyway) for £18.

Anyone good at maths, please define ratio

300:18, or 10(if you can call it that):8

Theres a valid point for you.

while you are all on the subject, which channels could your recieve with ITV Digital and how much were packages?

On the £3 per month

Discovery Wings
Taste CFN
UK Horizons
UK Style
UK Old
Carlton Cinema
E4
Granada Men&Motors/Granada Breese
Granada Plus
Cartoon Network
Paramount
Sky1
Discovery Kids

Any I've forgotten?

a. I can't afford another £10 even if it is "not that much more"

b. I don't want a dish on the side of my house

c. I don't have the need to have 200 channels on my television because I do have some sort of life which allows me to get out of the house.

d. My parents have Sky and there doesn't seem anything on to appeal to me to make me shell out any of my hard earned queens english to have it.

e. I'm quite happy with what Freeview/TUTV offer me when I am in the house and want to chill out with a beer and watch telly, which is why I have it.

f. The way I look at it an outlay of £7.99 is all I need to access over 30 different channels is a very reasonable price.

g. If I don't want TUTV anymore I can phone up and cancel it, I ain't tied in to a contract for a year having no optinon but to pay a minimum of £20 per month
Last edited by Swampy : 26-10-2004 at 17:11

Sounds like something that was good value for money

The Primary channels were good value (actually £9.99 for all or £7.99 for 6) as was FilmFour (at £6) - the Sky channels were originally 1 for £11, 2 for £15 or 3 for £18 later 4 for £20 - then $ky forced a price rise! (I haven't got the figures to hand) BTW you got sky sports3 free with sky sports 1 or 2 - wow!!!

There were three OnDigital channels used for varoius things - including Champions League football - one was a permanent barker (FirstONdigital) - these later became ONsport then ITVsports and ITVsportsExtra (free as extra primary channels - not sure if ITVsports or ITVsport must check)

OnRequest showed films @ £2.99 ordered over the phone or directly by your box (via modem) - for watching once (sometimes as often as you liked) in 24 hours - sometimes promos had films at £1.99. Ordering via modem was quick (took about 1 minute from deciding to ring to watching film -if you decided at the right time) OnRequest only used 5 slots - not even 24 hours and gave quite a good service - remember it was some time ago using the old OnDig boxes.

I have put the full breakdown of channels and costs on another thread - but I can't find it now!

When I get home I will start another thread with the channels and costs - with dates if can so people can use it as a reference - shout no! now if you think I should not!

---

***** SAD ABOUT JOHN PEEL *****
... I remember listening to him in bed when I was told I was too young to stay up! Liked his music programs and the Saturday morning one on Radio four.
Last edited by SimonBlackham : 26-10-2004 at 18:07

The Sony VTX-500, along with all On Digital boxes which they say they don't support, was officially made obsolete by ITV Digital; as such the software update which ITV Digital were going to roll out (and which TUTV now have) wouldn't have been deployed to these boxes (and now hasn't been by TUTV).

This update implements SECA2 encryption, a replacement for the extremely weak (and completely broken) SECA1 that ITV Digitial used. At present, Top Up TV don't appear to be using it, but if they change over to it in the future (as they are surely bound to do), you will find that your Sony will stop decrypting the channels (along with users of any unsupported box).


The Sky Family Pack isn't £10 / month more, it's £12.51 / month more, that's an extra £150 per year. And that's an extra £150 which many people cannot afford.

And compared to the nearest Sky package, Sky Basic, TUTV provides more; 10 timeshared channels with an average of 4 on at once for £7.99, compared to 3 channels (and until very recently it was only 2) for £13.50. Maybe you should 'do the math'?


Ah, that old misnomer, that Sky has 'hundreds' of channels just because it has 3 digit EPG numbers. There are indeed about 200 channels on the Sky EPG, but most of these are either FTA anyway (and shopping channels), or they are Box Office streams (which in itself accounts for about 40 channels). Aswell as that there are many premium services which you must pay more for.

Your Sky family pack subscription only pays for around 40 channels (not including +1's) - if even that many. It's certainly not 'hundreds' and it's certainly not 300.


Would this have been at launch? I remember paying £12.99 for all the primary channels, and IIRC that had gotten up to £14.50 by the time they collapsed.



First On Digital was supposed to be their flagship channel, showing first run movies, champion's league, and other exclusive content. FOD only became the barker channel that you mention in early 2000 when they underwent a little bit of restructuring of their lineup, and On Sport was created in addition to it. The First On Digital service itself was replaced by the text based service On View in 2001 (still on channel 20), which later became ITV Digital Information and moved to channel 88. On Sport 1 then became ITV Sport Channel and moved to channel 20 (it was on channel 99).

ITV Sport was not an extra primary channel, it was a premium service. The two other services were ITV Sport Select (free if you had ITV Sport Channel, PPV otherwise) and ITV Sport Plus (which you only got with the ITV Sport Channel), which replaced On Sport 2.

My thoughts exactly, there's just something so "tacky" about having a dish on your house. The way they put them half way up the front of your house - it's as if they can't be bothered to get a ladder out to get to the chimney!!

I wrote the post at work - from my admitted cloudy memory!

The above were launch prices - and our prices were frozen till the end of ONdigital - except for an extra £1 (from April 2nd 2001) for all the $ky channels - I will dig out my files! The FOD was supposed to be a 'special' channel for all sorts of things - but we waited and waited and waited - a bit like CBM! - and it changed as you said.


I think the totals at the end were...

philips box - (stopped renting and 'GRANADA home technology' gave us the box) £9.99 for all primaries £24 for all $sky (another £1 per channel price hike ??)
nokia box - (ITV gave us the box after ITVdigitals demise) £7.99 for 6 primaries, £6 for FilmFour

I think also one of the boxes had the extra ITVsports you mentioned (see below) or maybe we never took it up - files again!

We paid £1.69 a month for ON7 - later ITV7 a seven day guide posted to you each week.

We bought the special ONmail remote - with keyboard - for £15 - still a very good remote!

We subscribed to ONnet and got a box and full sized keyboard for £2 per month (??)

I need to get my bank statements out to check everything!

The main thing is the value for money...
If you dispense with the $ky 'premier' channels all the various offers seemed reasonable - except perhaps the £5 (??) for the ITVsport offerings which you got free before (and after on ITV1, ITV2 and ITVnews(!!!) - they showed live Champoins League matches on the ITVnews channel - no arguing then about which was the best of the news channels!!!)

Even the £14.50 odd for all primaries for newbies wasn't too bad! Although when we bought the Nokia box it came with all primaries for a year (discounted to £99 - from the box price of £129.95 (??) ) when we dropped to 6 only after a year @ £6.99 we had difficulty choosing more than 5 we wanted (NB we did have the philips with all + sky on it - but we were considering junking the subscription as too expensive and we chose the Nokia channels to be our only ones! ITVdigital and then its demise came before we made a decision)

We actually chose...
Eurosport, $ky one, MTV, UKstyle/Horizons and CarltonCinema as the 6th!

When ITVdigital started they split UKstyle / Horizons and we got UKstyle - when what we wanted was Horizons - still it wasn't a problem for long!

Looking at the ITVdigital letter now - I can see how my heart sank!

' ... we will be introducing a brand new Premium channel called the ITV Sport Channel. This channel will show the UEFA Champions league, Nationwide Divisions 1, 2 & 3 as well as the Worthington Cup. If you sign up before launch, you will pay only £6.99 per month - that's £3.99 a month for the ITV Sport Channel and £3 a month for any Premier League pay-per-view matches* we broadcast for an introductory period of 3 months..."

.. but of course the only thing worth watching (to us) was Champions League and we had been getting it free up till then!

Why is that threads discussing the inadequacies of the television subscription services of Messieurs Chance et West, always seem to transform into nostalgia about ON Digital services?

If TUTV is a rip-off @ £8/month then how does that compare to paying Sky £13.50/month for Sky One, Discovery H&L and Bloomberg. NTL have a better value base pack @ £9/month with Sky One, Sky Mix, E4, Eurosport.

TUTV gives You more quality channels than both of these packages, even if they are time shared.

If You have TUTV You can even get a reduced subscription to Screen Select @ £12/month, not bad.

Unless you compare with $ky - there is nothing else to compare with (foreign systems??). Also On/ITVdigital changed - perhaps we can see how TuTV can change.

If you write about what happened - nostalgia does creep back as in many ways for the customers it was going well - untill the final fiasco with the football killed it!

BTW "Nostalgia isn't what it used to be!"

£3 per month was a special offer for a year for IDTV owners

So did I, I missed out on the Monkey offer though. Quite a good listings guide that was too. As was the old monthly one which you used to get for free.


I got mine free from On Offer when they gave them away just before On Net started. I still use that as my remote of choice now.


BTW, if you still have your box you can continue to use it. Another company took over On Net/ITV Active and kept it running.

I am a TUTV subscriber.

On the whole I am all for it.

OK, so the channel line up clearly needs some work and hopefully this will come in time.

I mostly watch Discovery, Uk Gold and TCM when in the mood for a decent old film.

I am quite happy to pay £8 a month for the foreseeable future.

I look at it like this, if we didnt have TUTV bringing us some decent and half decent channels what would we have to put up with instead? More shopping channels, no thanks. Its clear that there is little interest from broadcasters to supply quality channels to a FTA service when they can get some revenue from Sky or wherever.

Right now, I think its the best solution.

Seconded. I'm just waiting now for someone to disagree with that viewpoint, mentioned ABC1 and ITV3 as examples of decent FTA channels - something which I can't see myself; I've watched 5 minutes of ABC1 since it started, and I can't imagine watching ITV3 at all.

Yes - but the threatening letters about pay-up or stop using it put me right off!!

If they had been a little lighter on their sales technique I might still be using it - but now we have broadband - so too late!

I wonder what percent of ONmail customers they lost/kept!

(You should always put the ON in caps - I've noticed in all my correspondence! )

I liked the ON/ITV7 Guide - in fact if you could get it now I would - preferably with the current DTT offerings - not what ITVdigital would have been broadcasting now!!!

I like the ON remote too - but unfortunately we need the OneForAll6 most of the time as it will control everything!
The Nokia remote is also good - I use it with my thumb in my left hand although I and the Remote is right-handed - the Nokias downfall is the lack of TV controls - the philips is much better in this respect only - but the On remote wins!

Do modern STB remotes have STB volume controls? - a waste of space if it has TV volume/mute buttons - which are an imperative!

To stay on thread - I think TuTV is marginally worth it - did I see somewhere that Bravo! may replace Bloomberg??
Last edited by SimonBlackham : 27-10-2004 at 15:22

Hi there

I had no qualms about paying £7.99 for the discovery channel alone.

Thats because I enjoy it and want to see it.

You know the deal before you sign up - you only have read this forum to see what you are getting.

I am happy - those that hate it, well we have freedom of choice.

My Gran ignored the letters and kept using it. Over 2 years later, she's still using it and has never paid a penny. ISTR that On Mail also took over the Bush Internet.TV service too didn't they?


I do have to agree there, the letters sent out to former ITV Active customers sounded more like a demand from a debt collection agency than a service provider trying to sell something.


Well as I said my Gran still uses it, I don't know of anyone else who does. That said, the replacement service has been going for 2 1/2 years now, so it can't be doing that badly.


Well since I find it particularly annoying when a certain TV Forum poster insists on writing 'SKYnews', I can't very well advocate writing 'ONdigital'


Agreed again. It's probably the best listings guide I've ever had. The lack of an 'official' DTT listings guide is annoying. Using free with the paper TV guides are annoying because they give huge expanses to 1-5 but squash all the other channels up (if they list them at all), whilst paid guides are quite expensive (compared to what ON7 used to cost) and involve sorting through a raft of channels which I can't get.


The worst one is the Pace remote that I have now. Not only does it control nothing but the box, it doesn't have a subtitles button and the layout is awful.


My Goodmands GDB3 had a volume control and a mute button. Can't see what the point of it is personally. IIRC, with the On Digital boxes the volume control didn't even work through a scart connection anyway, only through RF (although the mute button does).

To stay on thread - I think TuTV is marginally worth it - did I see somewhere that Bravo! may replace Bloomberg??

You know the deal before you sign up - you only have read this forum to see what you are getting.

...can I write $ky without incurring your wrath!

I tend to write OnDig or On/ITVdig anyway - so who am I to talk!

WRT to ITV7 - there is a marketing opportunity there for someone! I suppose the BBC would be the most likely - and they won't as that would hit sales of The Radio Times.