Early digital TV

[i.h]

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 ?

Same here, I remember moving in to a flat share in late 2006/7, and one of the girls had Virgin tv. I remember with amazement when I discovered I could binge watch the first series of “Life on Mars” and catch up on the previous episode that I had missed. Then following week visiting my parents and trying to find a similar catch-up function on their Sky+ box to and being sorely disappointed. I still haven’t gotten around to introducing my dad to that series :?

I think that might have even been before iPlayer rolled out publicly? (Was it called BBC player back then?) I had a friend who was a beta tester on the original iPlayer software which he had to download, and remember it used p2p type connection to download the drm BBC shows. From memory I also think he had to have an “always on” active internet connection in order to watch content too.

Sky also had an early streaming service that might have used the same P2P stuff as well - "Sky by broadband" or something like that.

I do remember lots of proclamations on other forums at the time that BT and Sky would never catch up with NTL/Telewest/Virgin, that they'd need to dig up the road and install new cables and that would never happen, and the telephone line would never truly be able to do it. Well, never say never...

Other early VOD systems include Homechoice (later absorbed into Tiscali) and of course the service that Kingston Communications had, both were streaming over specially built ADSL networks.