Open...
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Open... was the original interactive television service on BSkyBs Sky Digital platform. Running from launch in 1998 until October 2001, Open... was run by British Interactive Broadcasting (BIB), a consortium owned by BSkyB, British Telecom, HSBC and Matsushita. It was dropped in October 2001 and replaced by Sky Active, a brand which covers all Sky interactive services as well as those remaining from Open...
Open... was a major part of Sky's marketing campaign for Sky Digital, a new service with the double purpose of increasing the number of available channels, and moving from the completely cracked VideoCrypt analogue encryption system. At the beginning of its existence, Open... did not feature all the promised services, and not all of these ever materialised, at least not under the Open... name. While never successful, Open... did help in speeding up the switch to digital services, completed by Sky in under three years as opposed to the originally planned, far longer timescale, and also helped the acceptance of non-land based shopping in the UK.
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[edit] Services
Open...'s services were designed to allow the Sky Digibox to provide most of the features of a personal computer, with email and limited internet access. Internet banking, shopping, and games were all provided, albeit with an extremely limited range of banks and retailers.
Original plans were to provide a dual-use credit card with a smart card embedded, to allow purchases to be made without requiring manual entering of details. This never existed during Open...'s time, but was eventually launched in 2005 as Sky Card. An SMS gateway was also announced at one stage, allowing sending of SMS messages to Sky boxes - this was introduced in 2002, following the widespread deployment of the WapTV WML microbrowser under the Sky Active brand.
While not actually listed on the Sky EPG under Open...'s entry, the original gaming system on Sky, PlayJam, is often seen as having accompanied the service, although it was operated by OpenTV Inc, and not BIB.
[edit] Technical details
All parts of the system ran as OpenTV applications, which is likely how it got its name. Satellite bandwidth was used to provide static content, with all personalised content for the user, as well as all upstream communications, being sent over the Digibox's internal modem. With Digiboxes extremely expensive to produce in 1998 - non-Sky digital receivers without modems or OpenTV licences cost upwards of £300 at the time - BIB provided a hefty installation subsidy on the hope of reclaiming it income from the system. In return, it was made a many features of the Digibox were designed with Open... in mind, such as the modem, a second smart card reader, and a message light on the box coupled with a message button on the remote control, all of which have remained in the Digibox design to this day. Also, all customers had to agree to keep their Digiboxes connected to a telephone line for 1 year after installation, or repay the subsidised cost back to BIB as part of the Interactive Discount Contract which is still signed by new customers today.
Two additional Digibox accessories were produced for Open... - an infra-red keyboard for emailing, and a games controller for playing games.
[edit] Effective failure
While Open... was never publicly admitted to have failed, it is clear that BIB's costs were mounting, with a number of million satellite installs subsidised during its operation, and they were not being met by income from Open.... Sky purchased the other holdings in BIB, and effectively closed it down, although it still operates to this day, subsidising equipment directly from Sky's funds. All Open... services, with the addition of interactive content on Sky News and other Sky channels was rebranded Sky Active, and by December 2001, Open...'s websites were redirecting to Sky.
A number of reasons for Open...'s failure beyond costs exist. Poor marketing, initial slow takeup of Sky Digital, and resistance by users to keeping their boxes attached to a phone line reduced their potential market, and serious speed issues with the early Digiboxes meant that Open... was slow to the point of unusability, and also highly unreliable. Also, many of the involved partners, such as the ISP's providing email, retailers and even stock brokers pulled out of the system due to their market being lower than expected.
