Top Up TV
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| Top Up TV | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Type | DTT Pay TV and Download Service |
| Founded | 2004 |
| Headquarters | Jersey |
| Key people | David Chance and Ian West |
| Industry | Media |
| Products | Pay TV services Programming |
| Website | topuptv.com |
Top Up TV is a pay TV service provided in the United Kingdom. In addition to the Freeview channels, Top Up TV, for a monthly payment allows access to the On demand Top Up TV Anytime programme library. All the programmes from the user selected channels are downloaded from the library overnight. Subscription content ranges from Entertainment to Films and Kids to Documentaries and is set over 23 channels such as Cartoon Network, Living, TCM and MTV. The service is delivered overnight via the proprietary Thomson DTI 6300-16 Digital Terrestrial Recorder better known as Top Up TV+ Box.
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[edit] Company
The company was founded by two former BSkyB executives, David Chance and Ian West. It is 20% owned by Five who took a stake in 2005, its Financial Officer is Nick Humby from Manchester United. The owner of Access Industries, Len Blavatnik, is said to have purchased a 70% stake in January 2007.[citation needed] Top Up TV recently restructured which saw the original company liquidated under Members voluntary liquidation under the name Minds1. The company was then split up into 3 companies: Top Up TV 1, Top Up TV 2, Top Up TV 3. Arqiva holds the contract for Playout and Distribution services with Thomson Multimedia solely manufacturing the Top Up TV+ Box. Top Up TV formerly used ex-OnDigital and Top Up TV Ready set top boxes for the original 11 channel time-share service which is no longer available to subscribe to.
[edit] Top Up TV Anytime
On 30 August 2006 Top Up TV announced that it was to launch a new service known as Top Up TV Anytime. This enabled the viewer to watch some programming from new and existing channels once downloaded onto a special digital video recorder known as the Top Up TV+ Box. Existing set-top boxes with slots and PVRs cannot be used for the service however they can be used to subscribe to Setanta Sports 1. Programming is downloaded overnight via Video Streams on Multiplex A (whose space is leased out by Five) and totals to 600 hours of content a month, from July 2007 additional content will be available from some of the 19 subscription channels.
Subscribers had been informed by post about two new channels joining the service in September 2007 but these just turned out to be the two existing Info channel and Showcase. The Info channel provides video help about using the Top Up TV+ Box, and Showcase consists of programming from the Audi Channel and The National Lottery owner Camelot.
[edit] Programming
Top Up TV has indicated that Top Up TV Anytime will provide over 100 hours per week of downloaded programmes, meaning about 150 programmes to watch at any one time. The service broadcasts a variety of programmes from the following television channels:
- UKTV Gold
- Living
- Hallmark Channel
- Discovery Factual
- Cartoon Network
- Cartoon Network TOO
- Boomerang
- Nickelodeon
- Disney Channel
- Animal Planet
- UKTV Style
- UKTV Food
- Life & Times
- TCM
- British Eurosport
- Discovery Lifestyle
- MTV One (also certain programming from other MTV channels)
- Paramount Comedy
- The History Channel UK
- Crime & Investigation Network (UK)
- National Geographic Channel (UK)
- Sci Fi Channel (United Kingdom)
Premium/Bonus services:
- PictureBox, a premium movies service for an additional monthly charge.
- Setanta Sports 1 Additional Monthly Charge.
- Showcase (available free).
- Info Channel (available free).
All of the content from the Top Up TV Anytime service (except PictureBox movie service and Setanta Sports) is included in a £9.99 per month price package. Customers may select the channels they wish to receive in order to manage the space on their Hard Disc Drive more efficiently. The PictureBox movie service costs an additional £5 per month to TUTV Anytime subscribers. PictureBox is available as a standalone service costing £7 per month. PictureBox provides one movie from Universal Studios for subscribers to watch each night.[1] Certain "live" programming will be shown as part of British Eurosport, but it is unsure whether any other of the channels will have "live" capability for live events once the "old" streaming service is phased out.
The Overnight downloads and existing pay tv "live" channels like Setanta Sports and UKTV Gold are encrypted in SECA2 MediaGuard, a Nagra France conditional access system. It is believed that there has been a switch to the more secure Nagaravison encryption system, however the encryption services displayed on the box do not reflect this change. The video on demand programming "pushed" by Top Up TV are encrypted on disk in another format meaning if you cancel you will not be able to view the previously stored Top Up TV programmes.
[edit] Equipment
To receive the Top Up TV Anytime programme library, a subscriber must purchase a proprietary Top Up TV+ box built for Top Up TV by Thomson (model DTI 6300-16). The Top Up TV+ box automatically records programmes broadcast overnight. The user can then watch the stored programmes on demand.
Recently a 250GB model has become available to buy from Argos. The model is known as the DRT6300-25. Apart from sporting a higher capacity Hard Disk Drive there is 250 written on the right side. Both models contain the same software 2.88.
Upgrading Hard Disk Drives has been a long standing tradition among personal Video recorder owners. The box is known to support up to a 500GB HDD. The HDD can be replaced by removing screws on the back cover and opening up the inside of the box. It is similar to replacing the hard drive in a computer. The advantages this brings is that the higher capacity hard drive will allow the user to store more of their own content as well as more Top Up TV programmes if Top Up TV add more services at a later date.
The Top Up TV+ Box costs from £79.97 to £100. Before, the Top Up TV+ box cost between £139-£210. Special offers have been run in conjunction with The Mirror recently before the price drop to £99 which allowed the customer to buy the box for £99 and get 1 month free.
In the box is the Box itself, a Top Up TV bespoke remote control and SCART lead, a signal improvement kit, an RF lead and a power cable. Printed materials include the Top Up TV welcome pack, a remote control codes guide and an instruction manual.
The rear of the box has two SCART sockets, two tuners, an S-Video output, analogue phono output and Digital Audio output. It features an offline USB port on the front located next to the viewing card slot hidden behind an opening on the front panel.
For encryption services Top Up TV uses the Nagra France MediaGuard SECA2 system (however they have apparently upgraded to the more secure Nagravision[1]), whilst for interactive services the box has MHEG5 v1.06 software. The System software is developed by Top Up TV together with Nagra.
[edit] Firmware
Top Up TV+ Box has received 7 software revisions since its launch:
| Version | Released | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1.50 | Shipped firmware. | |
| 1.80 | First firmware update. | |
| 2.00 | 08/01/2007 | Second firmware update. |
| 2.44 | 12/03/2007 | Third firmware update. Fixed problems with the box crashing, rebooting, and missing or deleting recordings. Also added series link, which allows the whole series of a show to be downloaded automatically. |
| 2.81 | 03/07/2007 | Fourth firmware update. Improved general stability and encryption. Also added Subtitles, which although there was a dedicated button on the remote it was functionless. Also fixed the problem with BBCi News Multiscreen. |
| 2.88 | 08/11/2007 | Fifth firmware update. This software includes a number of enhancements and improvements. Specifically EPG & VOD Search (You need to turn this on by going MENU -> 4, 2 and then selecting on from line 5),expanded the Synopsis window, Removed the Anytime Grey Channel bars in the EPG, Revised “Favourites” screen, Series link reliability is now improved and failed series link recordings are re-scheduled, Inclusion of a Channel and VOD Channel Lock facility screen, added facility to “centre” the display off-set. The reliability of VOD downloads has been improved. The ability to save content from the VOD library to the user library has been re-activated. A number of other user interface changes that will make the DTR easier to operate and improved the stability of the DTR generally. It still retains a major bug from previous versions in that the rewind and fast forward functions are not reliable, as the box apparently "forgets" where it is and is liable to skip backward an hour or more if users fast-forward a show after rewinding once. |
| 2.91 | 31/03/2008 | Sixth firmware update. Addresses channel scanning issues for viewers in the [Sutton Coldfield transmitter] area, allegedly fixes some stability issues, and adds a troubleshooting option to the engineer menu to turn off the recording library's video preview window. [2] It still retains a major bug from previous versions in that the rewind and fast forward functions are not reliable, as the box apparently "forgets" where it is and is liable to skip back wards an hour or more if users fast-forward a show after rewinding once. It also fast-forwards instead of rewinding on occasions. |
[edit] History
Top Up TV, as Newincco 166 Ltd, attempted to make an application for the multiplex licence bid for multiplex D on the DTT service in 2002 as a joint application with Carlton, Granada and Channel 4, trading as the Digital Terrestrial Alliance (DTA). The company were prepared to offer a "viable" and "lite-pay" service, which would have provided a large number of free to air channels and a few pay-TV ones [2]. The bid was unsuccessful, and the licence was instead awarded to the BBC, BSkyB and Crown Castle, which later became National Grid Wireless.
After the turn-down of a multiplex bid, Top Up TV turned to public service broadcasters Five and Channel 4 to gain capacity on the platform. On multiplex A, Top Up TV were granted four long-term streams (one of which previously hosted TV Travel Shop), and on multiplex 2, were granted one short-term stream from Channel 4. They came up with a time-shared system which allowed 10 pay-TV channels to be broadcast in the space of five television streams, two of which were allotted "empty" space, which later became ABC1 and Teachers' TV. The sixth stream was used as a temporary measure (as of the short-term contract with Channel 4), and hosted pay-per-view channels Xtraview and Red Hot.
Top Up TV focused less on the premium services which were prominent of ITV Digital prior to 2002. By 2005, eleven channels were available on the service but were all time-shared. Overnight this dropped to as few as two channels (from the main package), in order to make space for premium adult entertainment channels.
Since 2007, Top Up TV Anytime is replacing the original service. Five revoked broadcasting capacity to launch Five Life and Five US. They had to move to the Push Ondemand Top Up TV Anytime service (see below).
[edit] Original service
From March 2004 Top Up TV provided a package of 10 timeshared TV channels, this was joined by an eleventh in 2005: UKTV Gold, UKTV Style, UKTV Food, Discovery Channel, Discovery Home&Lesiure, TCM, E4, Bloomberg, Cartoon Network and Boomerang. In 2005 British Eurosport replaced E4 and Toonami joined the line-up. Discovery Home&Lesiure was rebranded Discovery Realtime. It is expected that this will fully close down in favour of Top Up TV Anytime. The original service broke even at 250,000 subscribers according to many sources around the Time Top Up TV Anytime was announced. The original service has been stripped down to UKTV Gold, UKTV Style, British Eurosport this is likely to be stripped down even more in the future. From its launch Alice Beer ran an Information Programme viewable by the channel placeholders and the Top Up TV Sampler channel at the time about the service. However in 2007 when Top Up TV Anytime launched, the Top Up TV Promo channel ran a promotion service hosted by Craig Doyle.[Encyclopedic?]
Top Up TV provided additional services such as Xtraview which offered Top Up TV Channels for £1 a day but closed down after Channel 4 wanted the stream back for its own use. This was replaced by Top Up TV Pay As You Go which since closed. Top Up TV Active was an interactive advertising service that replace the off-air MHEG screens on Channel 107, it also featured an audio version of QuizWorld. Xtraview and Top Up TV still remain in a different form today with the off air MHEG being Top Up TV Active and the enter code system for Television X is using Xtraview's method of encryption.
[edit] Controversy
The BBC, a member of the Freeview Consortium, has accused Top Up TV of confusing customers by re-introducing pay-TV to DTT [3]. The Freeview consortium had intended to push DTT as an entirely free-to-air (FTA) option to avoid scaring off those who did not want to pay to watch TV. However, some suspect that the entirely-FTA proposition was a ploy by the BBC to safeguard the TV Licence, a suspicion confirmed by former BBC Director General Greg Dyke in his autobiography "Inside Story". Initially, the BBC tried to insist that all of Top Up TV's channels were put at the end of the EPG to avoid confusion. In response to this Top Up TV filed a complaint[4] with Ofcom over the BBC’s apparent refusal to list its new subscription channels on the DTT electronic programme guide. Ofcom spoke to the BBC and the matter was resolved between the parties. [3]
The Red Hot channel, which uses Top Up TV's Xtraview system, found itself with threats of legal action for infringing the Freeview trademark when the channel's advertising initially claimed to be on Freeview and used the Freeview logo.
Top Up TV had also found itself on the wrong side of a number of Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) and Ofcom adjudications [5] [6] [7] [8] [9], which have ruled that Top Up TV's advertising does not make the time-shared nature of the service clear enough. Their advertisements have been criticised in these rulings for appearing to indicate that 11 full channels are on offer when, in fact, the company only has broadcast access to 4.5 channel spaces and none of their channel offerings are broadcast full-time unlike their satellite and cable competitors.
The time sharing system also lead to criticism as it often cut programmes off before they were finished - especially on British Eurosport, and to a lesser extent on UKTV Gold. In its argument to the Advertising Standards Authority (see above), Top Up TV claimed that its channel suppliers joining the service had given an undertaking to align their channel's schedules to fit around Top Up TV's time sharing but that still left a few programmes cut off part way through.
On May 18, 2006 Top Up TV Ltd, Top Up TV's holding company, changed its name to Minds 1 Limited and entered members voluntary liquidation [10]. According to Top Up TV the move is part of a restructuring programme, and will see the company demerged into three separate companies; Top Up TV 1 Limited, Top Up TV 2 Limited, and Top Up TV 3 Limited. The voluntary liquidation, combined with the initial heavy £7 million loss as reported in its own annual report, has resulted in increased media speculation regarding the viability and future of Top Up TV.
There were many complaints about the quality of the Top Up TV+ box made by Thomson and some customers complained to the BBC's Watchdog consumer programme on BBC1 which featured this product on the 23 January 2007 edition of the show. The box was described as "not fit for purpose" by one very dissatisfied customer and customers have reported many problems such as box crashing, picture freezing, cooling fans not working, failing to record and failing to pick up signals. Some recent software updates have greatly improved certain aspects of the box like adding new features such as Series Link and Subtitles. The Top Up TV+ box has had many favourable reviews including being awarded 'Best Hard Disk Recorder' by Computer Shopper, "It's the price and flexibility that makes this our new favourite DTR." Computer Shopper, July 2007.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Welsh, James. "Top Up announces movies on demand service", Digital Spy, 2006-09-18. Retrieved on 2006-09-19.
- ^ "Top Up TV software updated to 2.91", Frequencycast UK Podcast, 2008-03-31. Retrieved on 2008-04-11.
- ^ Higham, Nick. "Freeview faces Top Up trouble", BBC News, 2004-02-16. Retrieved on 2006-11-23.
- ^ "BBC won’t let Freeview EPG be topped up", Broadband TV News. Retrieved on 2006-11-23.
- ^ Advertising Standards Authority (2006-03-01) Broadcast Advertising Adjudications 1 March 2006. Retrieved on 2006-11-24.
- ^ Advertising Standards Authority (2005-09-07) Broadcast Advertising Adjudications 7 September 2005. Retrieved on 2006-11-24.
- ^ Advertising Standards Authority (2005-03-02) Broadcast Advertising Adjudications 2 March 2005. Retrieved on 2006-11-24.
- ^ Advertising Standards Authority (2005-01-19) Non-Broadcast Adjudication Details. Retrieved on 2006-11-24.
- ^ Ofcom (2004-07-05) Advertising complaints bulletin. Issue A13. Retrieved on 2006-11-24.
- ^ Tryhorn, Chris. "Top Up TV undergoes restructuring", The Guardian, 2006-05-31. Retrieved on 2006-11-23.
[edit] External links
- Top Up TV
- Top Up TV Anytime Yahoo Group
- Top Up TV Anytime Forum - input from TUTVA engineers
- FrequencyCast's Top Up TV Anytime news page
- Digital Spy - TopupTV Forum (With comments from TopUp Engineers)
- PictureBox
