Early digital TV

[MatijaTelevizija]

In August 2001 , Sky+ launched and I believe my family got it in November 2001. 14-year-old me found this absolutely revolutionary and recorded as much as I could ( but was a good boy and copied them to VHS after watching a few times ) Another memory is that sometime around 2002 I spent way too much money on Sky Box-office. My parents were not happy about that. I even remember the PIN-code disaster in late 2005 , who else does ? ?

I remember this time well, and having arguments with my friends that Telewest Digital was better than Sky Digital at that time. In fairness the very basic VOD that Telewest offered later on in its life was arguable a pro over Sky at the time. But thats an argument for another time ha ha.

What was the 2005 Pin-code disaster? I haven't heard of that!

One of the main things that switched us over from Sky to Virgin in 2007 was video on demand. I can't express to you what a leap forward that felt like at the time - streaming was in its infancy at this point. The idea I could go into the EPG and have a programme fed to me in broadcast quality was just revolutionary.

Sky were quite late to the game with VOD. I remember they had a pseudo VOD system for a time where content was physically recorded onto a chunk of the Sky+ hard drive - limiting what you could use for your own recordings - but it wasn't until broadband speeds on the Openreach network got up to scratch that it really took off.

I only even noticed Anytime existed when I first got Sky+HD and later when my son used it to watch iCarly in HD before Nickelodeon HD was launched ?