Memories of the launch of BBC Digital 1998 onwards

[thegeek]

The main thing I remember is Open... - I think in the early days you could order Domino's Pizza from your TV, and of course there were the games - notably Beehive Bedlam! There was also the ability to send and recieve e-mail through your TV and for a tenner you could buy a wireless Open.... keyboard, which I think doubled as a remote for SkyDigital. I used to like it for the CD reviews but it took bloody forever to load.

Yes Open.. was a nice idea but way ahead of its time technically and made obsolete by the web. They were bought up by Sky and disappeared totally.

I bought an 'Open' keyboard in Dixons. Translucent blue plastic ?
It was about a Tenner. I recall the salesman attempting to sell me an extended warranty for it for 25 quid !

I'm still slightly disappointed I didn't buy one for 25p in my local Dixons in 2007 or so. I suspect they're compatible with Sky+HD boxes.

[Inspector Sands]

On the 17th October 2002, the day before it went into liquidation, ITV Digital was renamed On Digital 1998 PLC.
So no failure was associated with the ITV name I think was the reasoning.

Yes as that would be the name that was used in the wind up process for creditors. Plus it's the name that the company had the longest so a better one to use when winding up the company. The 1998 on the end is quite common in such circumstances I think, helps distinguish companies with similar names.


It might also have something to do with the laws on Pheonix Companies, although that lasts for 5 years and includes any names used in the last 12 months
https://www.gov.uk/government/publicatio...pany-names

At that time ITV Plc was just around the corner, having a company being liquidated which has a similar name owned by the same companies isn't a good look!

[James2001]

I had an old ITV Digital box which I bought cheap (at least by 2002 standards) after they went bust. Still had the On Digital logo on the menus. I used it for years, though it did get very slow. Stopped working after DSO because of some change they made in how the muxs were transmitted (from 2k to 8k mode or something like that, I think).

[Markymark]

I had an old ITV Digital box which I bought cheap (at least by 2002 standards) after they went bust. Still had the On Digital logo on the menus. I used it for years, though it did get very slow. Stopped working after DSO because of some change they made in how the muxs were transmitted (from 2k to 8k mode or something like that, I think).

Yes, the OnD boxes were only 2k capable, and could only support Now and Next EPG data (not the 7 day EPG that Freeview launched with). I don't think they had enough memory to support a 7 day EPG, so even a s/w upgrade wouldn't have fixed that. And the 2k FFT ability was baked into the hardware, so sadly they became doorsteps at DSO.

Mine was still working perfectly until 00:34hrs on the morning of DSO in my area. The last image received was Sky News on the final pre DSO mux to be switched off.

I took the lid off and smashed the motherboard* on mine before taking it to the tip (There were lots of OnD boxes being sold on ebay etc as working Freeview boxes, so as a measure to avoid mine getting used for that I destroyed it)

*Horrible thing to do to something that hours earlier was working perfectly !

[johnnyboy]

IME, the onDigital boxes (mine was from late 98) were so dog slow.

I do remember how amazed I was by the EPG when I first saw it - for our younger forum members, being amazed at an EPG must sound crackers.

On Tyneside, the reception was fine - I could get all the channels and the picture never really blocked, despite the fact I was in a ground floor flat at the time with a bus stop right outside of it.

Going back earlier to the idea of BBC 1 TV (the TV version of Radio 1), this, of course, morphed into the excellent UK Play.

I really appreciated how closely branded the BBC and UKTV were at the time - to me, it lent the UKTV channels more credibility. Pity UK Play died a death - The Phone Zone was great breakfast TV.

[James2001]

Wasn't The Phone Zone on in the afternoons? I do vaguely remember it getting a breakfast repeat though (which admittedly is a bit odd for a phone in request show). IIRC it later got rebranded as "TOTP@Play", and there was TOTP+ on BBC2 which used the same studio and presenters (one of Vernon Kay's first gigs IIRC).

[johnnyboy]

Wasn't The Phone Zone on in the afternoons? I do vaguely remember it getting a breakfast repeat though (which admittedly is a bit odd for a phone in request show). IIRC it later got rebranded as "TOTP@Play", and there was TOTP+ on BBC2 which used the same studio and presenters (one of Vernon Kay's first gigs IIRC).

You could very well be right.

There was definitely a weekday morning phone-in show mainly featuring music videos and presented by Jamie Theakstone, Jayne Middlemiss (I think), and others.

I had remembered it as the Phone Zone - what could it have been called?

[Inspector Sands]

The big problem UK Play had compared with other music channels was that initially it could only show pre-made programmes of music videos rather than just playing individual videos. So everything was edited together into programmes including presenter led ones like Chris Moyles' show and some of those were often reused. Not very flexible, though live programmes like The Phone Zone played the videos themselves so could react to requests etc.

Later on when it became Play UK they invested in a system that could do that which cut out a lot of post production work and made it more reactive and immediate. However the channel closed not long after

[Inspector Sands]

IME, the onDigital boxes (mine was from late 98) were so dog slow.

I do remember how amazed I was by the EPG when I first saw it - for our younger forum members, being amazed at an EPG must sound crackers.

On Tyneside, the reception was fine - I could get all the channels and the picture never really blocked,

I was in a second floor last in North London when I first had mine and it worked fine with an ancient (late 60s - it was specially for BBC2) set top aerial.... until a motorbike went past and it momentarily broke up.

There was something so exciting about bringing it home, plugging it in and suddenly a load of new TV channels appeared. From an aerial! I'd never had anything other than analogue at the time. I worked in one of the places the channels were coming from but it still seemed magic

[James2001]

The big problem UK Play had compared with other music channels was that initially it could only show pre-made programmes of music videos rather than just playing individual videos. So everything was edited together into programmes including presenter led ones like Chris Moyles' show and some of those were often reused. Not very flexible, though live programmes like The Phone Zone played the videos themselves so could react to requests etc.

Yes, I remember that, each 15 minute-odd segment was pre-compiled, and as you said often got re-used, so you'd know what videos were going to follow. On a few occasions I even saw them using ones which were clearly a year or two old.

[James Martin]

UK Play I remember repeated Miami 7, S Club 7's first TV show, during Summer 1999 after running on CBBC that Spring.

[nwtv2003]

I remember when they wanted to give UK Play a boost in audience, so they decided run it in the downtime of UK Horizons which at that time was available on Sky analogue and on most cable providers. However, this meant it was only air from 1:00am to 7:00am.

My understanding was that Play rated quite well on digital terrestrial as its only competitor was MTV. As I believe it was ITV Digital’s collapse which led to UKTV withdrawing the channel outright.

The latter incarnation of UKTV G2 and then early Dave certainly felt like Play had been brought back to life. But Dave certainly became it’s own thing very quickly.

[Inspector Sands]

The analogue satellite channel that carried UK Horizons was originally the UKTV Preview Channel - a timeshift of Style, Horizons and Arena. It was the only way most viewers could see the channels until digital came along.

[James2001]

UK Play was on some analogue cable services, it was on ours (albeit not on our package, though it was the "guest channel" in April 2000).

[Robert Williams]

The analogue satellite channel that carried UK Horizons was originally the UKTV Preview Channel - a timeshift of Style, Horizons and Arena. It was the only way most viewers could see the channels until digital came along.

The UKTV preview channel was presented like this, with a reduced screen size:



I think the message at the bottom of the screen was originally longer and scrolled continuously across the screen, but was soon changed to this less distracting static message. The channel showed UK Horizons from 7am-2pm and 6-9pm, UK Style from 2-6pm and UK Arena from 9pm to closedown.