After reading this;

"Top Up announces movies on demand service
Monday, September 18 2006, 12:38 BST - by James Welsh

Top Up TV's upcoming Anytime service will include a movies on demand service owned by NBC Universal, it was announced today.

Named "PictureBox," the service will be delivered using Top Up TV's Anytime service and will launch this autumn.

"PictureBox is one of the first services of its kind for premier film content, providing consumers with a rich mix of programming, on demand, at an attractive price point," said Belinda Menendez, president of NBC Universal International TV Distribution.

Subscribers to PictureBox will pay a to-be-determined monthly fee to access films that will be delivered and stored on the Top Up TV Anytime PVR. At launch, seven films will be available on any given day with a new film broadcast to boxes nightly.

"We are delighted Universal have decided to support the Top Up TV Anytime service with a premium movie subscription-on-demand service," said Top Up TV CEO Ian West. "It has been nearly 5 years since Freeview customers have been able to view premium movies and we are delighted to be able to bring this option to customers."

Top Up TV's new Anytime box is expected to be available in October. "


It is becoming more and more unclear why I am subscribing to HC! At the moment I have 4 free months... and i think 2 months remaining! But once that is up why is anyone going to bother stayijng with Homechoice?

My supscrition costs once my 4ths is up will be £37.99
Now to be honest I never watch C1 at least only the odd episode of Family guy and that is now for the 2nd or third time. There is not a single REPLAY programme on that is worth watching and now Freeview (who will carry the new channel 5 channels Life and US) is up to 40 TV broadcast channels! + 2 interactive channels! + 4 HDTV channels + all their radio feeds!

What does HC have that Freeview does not? VMX? well that novelty soon wheres off I have an IPOD with BOSS speakers and that has over 3000 songs that I like on there!

And now reading the above quote it seems Universal will be releasing a movies on demand service that is not pay per movie but a subscription that allows all the latest movies straight onto a PVR!!!! GENIUS! What does HC have to compete... oh well thay have MN CLUB which shows the worst 50 films for a fiver ever!

So if I have VMX for £5 per month and Movies now club at £5 then my subscription is £37.99 per month! That is a lot of money! + my phone calls that is now £47.99! When I could buy a freeview box... nothing per month! Maybe get top up TV! So that is then £10 per month! cheap fast internet! Or what about SKY! for that kind of money I could have the best possible pack pe month + unlimited 16mb broadband for less than £47.99 per month!

HC have it all wrong... they offer nothing more than a glorified FREEVIEW package and at a non glorious price!

There is no doubt as soon as my 4mths is over I will be leaving HC and leading to a world of FREE TV!!!!!!!!
Last edited by bennat : 03-10-2006 at 17:48

In fact check out this link

http://www.topuptv.com/newcustomer/home.html

and tell me that this is not so much better value for money than HC!!!

It is a PVR recording 2 channels at once! Better than REPLAY!

HC is not the future I am afraid... i am jumping ship!
Last edited by bennat : 03-10-2006 at 17:51

It does look like a pretty good deal, 'cept the startup costs are £209 then £9.99pm, not including any broadband or owt. So you're looking at nearly HC pricing over a year (obviously this comes down in year 2)...

I think everything's going to become ultracompetitive soon when BT Vision and Orange TV both get announced properly, not to mention NTL/Virgin when they sort their CS out...

They list all those channels, but really you only get programmes from those channels, not the channel itself. And you don't really get that much programming.

And they pick and chosse what program for you to watch!
As well as these programs are downloaded to the Set top box over night so your a day out.

So in Fact in the new top up tv service your gettin a selection on programs form a wider selection of channels than they used to have.

check out the topuptv/pay dtt forum go's more into it

It's not on demand, is that what you're saying? They decide what to download using their night time bandwidh rather than you choosing it, yeah? Coz it's not two-way?

Exactly that - there's no return path involved, and no real cleverness to the service. They push out a handful of programmes from each channel each week (ie a couple of hours of MTV and Discovery on Monday night, a few hours of UK Gold and Cartoon Network on Tuesday etc) and the box records this each night. By the end of the week you have a few programmes from each "channel" stored on the box, and as the next week progresses these are then replaced with the next week's selection (unless you choose to store them more permanently on your own personal part of the hard drive).

In theory, you have around 90 hours of programming from all of these channels to watch at any one time (or 5 hours from each of them) - but if you sit down and watch your weekly five hours from Discovery in one sitting, that's it then till next week's download.

I know nothing about Homechoice to be honest, but I can't believe it's not infinitely better...

To be honest the difference is more or less the location of the shows.

HC does have a slightly wider selection but again once you've watched all the knowledge shows or all of a series it's done.

It doesn't change very often and it's pretty much all repeats.

There's a chance that TUTV will be offering newer shows on their service.

I'll be paying some attention to it but only once the box is cheaper.

TopUp's service potentially looks interesting but at the moment there's too many unknowns - and the advertising is potentially misleading (apparently there's been a lot of complaints about this).

Until it becomes clear just how many programmes are on this Anytime thing - and crucially, what they are - then I'm sticking with HC. I'd rather have the option of watching anything on Paramount Comedy at the time it broadcasts than someone else's limited pickings on demand...

From reading the Top-up-tv forums it seems you will get 1 show per channel per night of their choosing and you will revieve this the next day. I imagine the show available will be more up to the broadcaster not Top-up-tv. So doesnt sound too great to me really.

Yeah, I do think that PVRs are the way forward in some form. One of the reason replay TV has been so appallingly under supplied with content is that if the broadcaster/platform are the ones doing the recording they need to license each and every program before 'rebroadcasting' back to us, the HC viewer. But at least if HC gave us our own box with a hard disk in it then we are able to record anything rather, which immediately opens up many more options. I use a PVR with review on my computer at the moment*and it's totally rad... Couple that with being able to stream the picture from my computer to my TV (Apple's iTV or Slingbox) and all is good...

The best thing about the PVRs is that they let YOU choose what's on your very own private replay. No more moaning about this-or-that series not being on HC replay.

I have switched to Freeview with a dual-tuner PVR some while ago. The investment will amortize itself over less than one year against saved HC subscription fees, and I have never looked back: My very own replay, and superb image quality.