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Top Up TV

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Jaxboy32 (talk | contribs) at 23:25, 24 December 2010 (→‎Sky Sports 1 and 2). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Top Up TV
Company typeDTT Pay TV and Download Service
IndustryMedia
Founded2004
HeadquartersLuxembourg
Key people
David Chance, Nick Humby
ProductsPay TV services
Programming
RevenueUnknown
Websitetopuptv.com

Top Up TV is a subscription video on demand service broadcasting on the digital terrestrial platform in the UK. The service offers an assortment of content from providers such as BBC, Warner, Cartoon Network and TCM. The content is accessed by a Top Up TV Freeview+ digital Television recorder. There are three viewing packs to which customers are able to subscribe; the standard pack being TV Favourites which costs £11.99 per month with no contract. The second viewing pack is a premium movies service providing 30 on-demand films a month from NBC Universal called PictureBox. The third viewing pack is ESPN which for a monthly fee of £9.99 viewers can watch live premiership football amongst other sports such as UFC and MLS. ESPN is the permanent replacement for the defunct Setanta Sports channel which went into administration and ESPN America which was broadcast shortly after Setanta’s collapse. On 2 August 2010, Sky Sports 1 and Sky Sports 2 became available to view through Top Up TV.

Services (2006-present)

On 30 August 2006 Top Up TV announced that it was to launch a new service known as Top Up TV Anytime. The new service required a new DTR known as the Top Up TV Freeview+ box (originally branded the Top Up TV Anytime DTR then Top Up TV+ Box). The box is effectively a Freeview+ digital television recorder which allows access to on-demand and encrypted channels which are Nagravision Merlin (NagraVision 3) encrypted. The original service of 11 live channels, since Anytime's launch, has been reduced to 2 live channels, G.O.L.D. and Home. Existing channels of the original service at launch closed down or had their hours reduced before being phased out completely. Existing channels along with new channels such as Living and Disney Channel joined the new service and began offering content on an on-demand basis. The service when launched cost £9.99, an increase of £2 from the original service.

Programming

Top Up TV content is available by pressing the Top Up TV button on the remote whilst watching a live TV channel or perusing the EPG. The squares with the name of the various providers are called lozenges. As of June 2009 the Top Up TV programming has been arranged into genres. ESPN is a live channel on the EPG at channel 34 but has no lozenge. G.O.L.D. and Home can also be watched live on channels 17 and 26 respectively. Teachers TV is also carried free on the Top Up Anytime 3 stream live on channel 88 and on-demand via a lozenge in the Top Up TV section of the guide.

TV Favourites

Launched in 2006, Top Up TV anytime begun to replace the linear service which was reduced as Five, which took a 20% share in Top Up TV the previous year, launched its digital channels Five US and Five Life (now Fiver and Five USA). Top Up TV Anytime offered on-demand content from channels such as Cartoon Network and Living TV. In 2009, Top Up TV anytime was rebranded as TV Favourites a viewing package of Top Up TV who longer needed the anytime brand to differentiate its on-demand service from its previous linear service. Overtime channels like Living and UKTV Style were phrased out in favour of content from content providers such as BBC, Warner and Disney. The channel icons displayed on the Top Up TV EPG changed from being the logo of their respective channel in favour of a uniformed Genre list. As of August 2010 the TV Favourites consists of the following services:

Comedy

Drama

Factual

Kids

PictureBox

Main article: PictureBox Movies

PictureBox is a premium movies service which 28+ movies are downloaded to the subscribers Top Up TV Freeview+ Box every night for a monthly fee. Movies offered are from the NBC Universal library.

ESPN

Main article: ESPN UK

ESPN is a premium sports channel offering Premier League football amongst other sports for a monthly fee. The channel can be accessed through a CAM (Conditional Access Module), set top box with a slot, an IDTV with a slot or through a Top Up TV Freeview+ box. The channel is also offered by BT Vision. It is the replacement for the defunct Setanta Sports 1 channel which went into administration and was closed. Bandwidth limitations means the channel does not broadcast for 24 hours a day.

Sky Sports 1 and 2

Main article: Sky Sports

Ofcom's pay TV review saw Sky Sports 1 and Sky Sports 2 be offered under something called wholesale must offer (WMO) which effectively forces BSkyB to offer these channels to its competitors. Using capacity which BT secured and uses to offer the same channels to its BT Vision Subscribers, Top Up TV now also offers these two channels to its subscribers which officially launched on 2 August 2010. Top Up TV offer Sky Sports 1 and Sky Sports 2 for up to £31.99 for both channels however the connection fee is up to £20 and first month is for free. The Sky Sports channels and ESPN can all be taken for £39.99 per month. Top Up TV hoped to be able to offer Sky Sports 1 and 2 via DTT from January.[1] This would be possible only via CI+ compatible IDTVs and set top boxes.

Discontinued services

Previously Animal Planet, MTV, Paramount Comedy, Toonami (Replaced by CN Too), CN Too, TCM, Syfy, Life and Times, Sports Xtra, Hallmark Channel, LIVING, Discovery Channel and Discovery Real Time offered programming on-demand through Top Up TV but was later discontinued due to merging with its main channel or discontinued carriage. Setanta Sports 1 was also available until the channel went into administration and subsequently closed down. British Eurosport offered both on a live and Video On Demand Basis was also available but was discontinued. Free services – Info channel, Showcase, Lotto Xtra On-demand, Playphone hits and Teachers TV ondemand have been discontinued. Top Up TV is now dealing direct with content providers rather than channel providers.

Equipment

Top Up TV Freeview+ box

Main article: Thomson DTI 6300-16

A range of Top Up TV Freeview+ Digital TV recorders automatically records programmes broadcast overnight, which the user can then watch on demand. The first generation box was manufactured by THOMSON – Thomson DTI 6300-16 the containing a 160GB HDD. Higher capacity boxes were introduced later on with the THOMSON DTI 6300-25 effectively the Thomson DTI 6300-16 with a 250GB HDD. Furthermore different manufacturer's equipment such as LUXOR, BUSH, SHARP, WHARFEDALE and a new THOMSON box became available from retailers such as Argos and ASDA. These newer boxes contain varying degrees of capacity ranging from 160GB to 500GB.

Included in the packaging is 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 a powered but functionless USB port on the front or rear of the DTR.

Programming is encrypted using Nagravision Merlin (NagraVision 3) since a card swap in 2008 as well as being DES encrypted on box. Previously programmes were encrypted by MediaGuard SECA2 a more secure version of the encryption system used by the ill fated but superior (in many ways)[citation needed] ITV Digital Service.

Set top box

Initially, Top Up TV made use of set top boxes with viewing card slots to offer a linear pay TV service badged as Top Up TV Ready. Since the move to an On-Demand service set top boxes with viewing card slots these are only able to receive ESPN. BSkyB has insisted, with the launch of Sky Sports on DTT, that the viewing smartcard must be paired to the set top Box. Top Up TV Freeview+ boxes have this facility with the CAN number; however, few other set top boxes have this facility.

Conditional Access Module (CAM)

A conditional Access module can be inserted into a CI slot mostly found on modern IDTV's to enable decryption of encrypted services. Whilst Top Up TV offers a branded CAM only ESPN can be received. This is due to BSkyB having concerns with the security of these modules meaning Sky Sports 1 and Sky Sports 2 are not available. These cams are not the newer CI+ CAM's which are deemed more secure.

Corporate information

The company was founded by two former BSkyB executives, David Chance and Ian West. Top Up TV is 20% owned by Channel Five who took a stake in 2005, its Financial Officer is Nick Humby from Manchester United. Top Up TV's management team currently consists of Nick Markham as chief executive officer, Matt Seaman as chief operating officer, Nick Humby as chief financial officer and Simon Dore as chief technical officer.

During 2006, Top Up TV restructured which saw the original company liquidated under Members voluntary liquidation under the name Minds1. The owner of Access Industries, Len Blavatnik, is said to have purchased a 70% stake in January 2007.

According to the official Registre de Commerce et des Sociétés of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the most recent accounts lodged by Top Up TV Europe S.a.r.l. in 2009 (Comptes sociaux ou consolidés of 11 September 2009) indicated debts of 34 million euro and ongoing losses of 2 million euro.[2][3]

Original service (2004-2006)

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.[4] 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.

From its launch in 2004, Alice Beer ran an Information Programme viewable by the channel placeholders and the Top Up TV Sampler channel at the time about the 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 & Leisure, TCM, E4, Bloomberg, Cartoon Network and Boomerang. In 2005 British Eurosport replaced E4 and Toonami joined the line-up. Discovery Home & Leisure was rebranded Discovery Real Time. In its first year of operation, the company made losses of £7 million. It is expected[by whom?] that this will fully close down in favour of Top Up TV Anytime.[citation needed] The original service broke even at 250,000 subscribers according to some sources around the Time Top Up TV Anytime was announced. However, this figure fell significantly short of the claimed potential subscriber numbers of 650,000 as set out in the original Freeview Plus proposal document.

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.

Since December 2006, the original service has been mostly replaced with the push video on demand service. The 11 channel line up has been reduced to 2 live channels which are expected to be phased out soon. The Xtraview access control system is still in use today for TelevisionX.

See also

References

  1. ^ http://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2010/12/15/ofcom-allows-cam-reception-of-sky-sports
  2. ^ Actualités Registre de Commerce et des SociétésTop Up TV S.a.r.l. Annual Accounts, 14 September 2009
  3. ^ TopUp TV Finance Statement 2009 Wikisend
  4. ^ Freeview Plus - Executive Summary Ofcom


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