OnDigltal/ITV Digital exclusive channels and services

[Rillington]

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.

[jfman]

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.

[Media Boy UK]

Originally Posted by jfman

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.

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.

[Rillington]

Originally Posted by jfman

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.

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

[Rillington]

Originally Posted by Rillington

Services:

ONMail
ONNet
ONrequest/ITV Select

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

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

[jfman]

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.

[Rillington]

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

[jfman]

Originally Posted by Rillington

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

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.

[Rillington]

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.

[jfman]

Originally Posted by Rillington

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.

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.

[Rillington]

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).

[Media Boy UK]

Originally Posted by Rillington

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).

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.

[Rillington]

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?

[Media Boy UK]

Originally Posted by Rillington

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

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

[Rillington]

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