OnDigltal/ITV Digital exclusive channels and services
 

I thought that whilst thinking back to the days of analogue cable that it might be interesting to look back to the days of OnDigital and ITV Digital and the exclusive (ie channels that did not broadcast on Sky Digital) channels and services that it offered.

TV Channels:

Carlton Food Network
Carlton Select
Carlton Kids
Carlton World
Carlton Cinema
ONSport and its forerunner Champions on 28/99

Services:

ONMail
ONNet
ONrequest/ITV Select

I'm sure there were other services but it is those that I can recall.

Re: OnDigltal/ITV Digital exclusive channels and services
 

Ah the nostalgia.

I remember getting the prepaid box with six channels (I think) £99 for 12 months. Pixelation was quite common, despite being about ten miles from a large transmitter at that point.

Re: OnDigltal/ITV Digital exclusive channels and services
 

Yes you are right about the 6 channels with your prepaid box.

I had E4, Sky One, Nick/Paramount Comedy, UK Gold plus two other channels plus ITV Sport Channel from July 2001.

I got my old On Digital / ITV Digital from my local Woolworths in January 2001. But the channels I ordered was broadcast for FREE on my box after January 2002 up to ITV Digital was placed in administration. Months later I got 2p put into my bank from the ITV Digital administration team.

Re: OnDigltal/ITV Digital exclusive channels and services
 

Yes. you were able to get a package whereby you could choose six channels.

Re: OnDigltal/ITV Digital exclusive channels and services
 

Are there any other services that they provided that I have forgotten about - after all it is 20 years ago!

Re: OnDigltal/ITV Digital exclusive channels and services
 

So without outing yourself. What proportion of users that you know didn’t have a gold card?

Think it was 75/25 in favour of the gold card for me.

Re: OnDigltal/ITV Digital exclusive channels and services
 

I'm not sure what this has to do with ONDigital/ITV Digital.

Re: OnDigltal/ITV Digital exclusive channels and services
 

Well, the company collapsed for two main reasons.

• Mass piracy of the service
• Paying too much for football rights

While nobody can ever realistically quantify the former - it was hard enough then never mind 20 years later - it was merely curiosity as to whether my observations were similar to the experience of others. Numbers were estimated from the low hundreds of thousands to potentially having more people viewing illegally than legally.

Re: OnDigltal/ITV Digital exclusive channels and services
 

It was the crazy amount of money that ITV paid for the rights to the Football League that caused ITV Digital to collapse. They paid £125+million per season for three years instead of paying that amount for all three seasons. If they had done the latter I think that ITV Digital would have survived.

Re: OnDigltal/ITV Digital exclusive channels and services
 

I do agree, there were plans afoot to upgrade the encryption which were potentially 2 years away but the Football League rights were astonishing amounts for rights that are very much secondary to end users.

If I recall ITVD tried to renegotiate with the league who refused, under the false belief that Carlton and Granada would be liable on any case. When ITVD folded they got less from Sky than the ITV Digital proposal.

Re: OnDigltal/ITV Digital exclusive channels and services
 

That's right, and everyone lost out.

---------- Post added at 15:53 ---------- Previous post was at 15:48 ----------

and back to the original question, Discovery Kids and Discovery Wings were exclusive to the platform when they launched. They replaced Carlton Kids and Carlton World respectively and were created because the platform was not able to carry the main Discovery channel at that time, although not that long after, the main Discovery channel did launch on OnDigital and the two Discovery channels were removed from the platform, and ended up on Sky Digital. i have no idea if they ever appeared on cable however.

And it's worth noting that Carlton Cinema did appear on cable as it took Carlton Select's slot on cable platforms when that channel closed, broadcasting from 7pm to 7am (I think).

Re: OnDigltal/ITV Digital exclusive channels and services
 

Carlton Cinema did broadcast from 7pm to 7am in Telewest Digital areas in 1999 on Channel 425.

But I think NTL viewers got Carlton Cinema 24/7.

Telewest was an joke.

Re: OnDigltal/ITV Digital exclusive channels and services
 

and those hours were probably also the broadcast hours on the analogue cable services.

Also, were Carlton Kids and Carlton World ever available on cable?

Re: OnDigltal/ITV Digital exclusive channels and services
 

I cant talk for NTL Viewers but ITV Sport Channel, Carlton Kids and Carlton World was not Telewest in Central Scotland.

Re: OnDigltal/ITV Digital exclusive channels and services
 

ITV Sport Channel was available on ntl but, as you rightly say, not on Telewest or Sky Digital.

Re: OnDigltal/ITV Digital exclusive channels and services
 

You want to know the real reason it collapsed? They didn't listen to me!! I was on a special projects team for them and actually put forward a proposal for a dedicated wrestling channel were ecw wwf and wcw could be watched exclusively and ppvs and back catalogues, would have been great and one of the reasons I gave for looking at this route instead of the football was if you gave a toss about how Hull were getting on at Lincoln you'd be there! Sadly wasn't listened to and predictably we opted for footie, not sure it even made it to the desk of anyone important enough to do anything with it but things could have been so different if it had.

Two channels you've missed

Men and motors
Exclusive champions league channel

The latter was a massive draw and I think that convinced the top brass that people would pay for any football but embarrassingly sometimes the attendances were greater than the viewing figures for some matches

I also remember having sky sports 1 and 3 but not 2 hilariously and I think there was a granada plus in there to, rings a bell from somewhere

Re: OnDigltal/ITV Digital exclusive channels and services
 

Men Motors and Granada Plus were also available on Sky Digital when that platform launched which is why I didn't mention them, although of course both channels, along with Granada Breeze, were available on OnDigital from when the platform launched.

Re: OnDigltal/ITV Digital exclusive channels and services
 

Breeze was the "woman's" channel, was that rebranded, I remember it but can't recall it being in the original line up, perhaps because it's content was so forgettable :shrug:

Re: OnDigltal/ITV Digital exclusive channels and services
 

It was originally called Granda Good Life and was on air between 6am and 6pm, with four distinctive slots, each running for three hours. They were:

Granada Food & Wine
Granada Health & Beauty
Granada TV High Street
Granada Home & Garden

---------- Post added at 14:27 ---------- Previous post was at 14:26 ----------

It's also worthwhile mentioning that Granada also had a stake in a short-lived shopping channel which aired on OnDigital/ITV Digital. It was called Shop!

Re: OnDigltal/ITV Digital exclusive channels and services
 

All channels listed was also on Telewest and Sky.

*I can't talk for NTL as my Cable area was Telewest.

Re: OnDigltal/ITV Digital exclusive channels and services
 

There was also "Internet" through your TV, pretty basic by today's standards, reading emails, bit of online shopping, nothing by today's standards but groundbreaking for the time

Re: OnDigltal/ITV Digital exclusive channels and services
 

It was called OnMail.

---------- Post added at 15:06 ---------- Previous post was at 15:05 ----------

On analogue cable in my area (operated by Bell Cablemedia and then CWC), Granada Plus/Men& Motors were available but they did not offer Granada Good Life or Granada Talk.

Re: OnDigltal/ITV Digital exclusive channels and services
 

Doesn't even ring a bell! I remember being involved in the trials and not even taking it home, about the only thing I remember is messing about with the funky joystick on the keyboard type thing at my desk

Re: OnDigltal/ITV Digital exclusive channels and services
 

I do seem to recall that you would have had to pay call charges to send any email using OnMail as you did in the early days of the internet.

Re: OnDigltal/ITV Digital exclusive channels and services
 

Right at the start of its short life, ITV did purchase rights to exclusive events to try to drive take-up, including a Mike Tyson fight and a pop concert by, i think, Steps. I seem to recall they were shown on a channel called First OnDigital.

Interesting that OnDigital chose to again copy what Sky had done a decade earlier when Sky showed boxing and music concerts (plus WWF) on Sky Movies in the early 1990s, renaming the channel to Sky Movies Plus during this period. This continued until Sky Sports became a subscription channel on 1 September 1992.

Re: OnDigltal/ITV Digital exclusive channels and services
 

I seem to recall that the six channels I chose included UK Gold, Sky One, Granada Plus, MTV and UK Play.

Re: OnDigltal/ITV Digital exclusive channels and services
 

I am pretty sure that I did choose the above five but I can't remember what the sixth was.

What six channels did other OnDigital subscribers choose if they got the six channel package?