Most of those Interactive service are commercially exclusive to $ky, which basically means the broadcasters are offered incentives to only produce content for Sky. From the likes of ITV, CH4 and UKTV we will never see Interactive.
As for Sky Active.........Sky know they are onto a good thing, they can steal customers with the lack of 8 games on Cable or Multistart films.
Until people complain to OFCOM Little will change.
I actually thought the EPG was equally crap and slow, but I guess that is box dependant.........give me the TV Times anyday. That lift music is pure irritation as is the loss of tv sound.........or a mini picture.
ntls search and scan is miles ahead of the Sky blue and white 'block the picture', that doesnt really do very much, it doesnt even tell you what time the programme you are watching started!!...........which is useful to say the least!
You cant find info on anything on later, you cant quickly turn on subtitles, you cant browse and keep the banner up for more than 30 seconds (like pressing tv on ntl).
Will Sky ever catch up on that?
As well as having customer service even worse than ntls and a installation team that couldnt tell its arse from its elbow...........they are great!
(All in my personal experience, neither is particualrly better than the other, Sky is just getting away with abusing its monopoly position due to OFCOMS lack of balls)