NTL Interactive

Originally Posted by Rillington

ntl chooses not to offer News 24 multiscreen. It's available on Sky (obviously) and also on Telewest. I believe there is some extra stuff on Freeview too.

I thought it was the BBC who chose not to implement multi-screen on the NTL platform - could be wrong though.

[Tristan]

Originally Posted by Rillington

ntl chooses not to offer News 24 multiscreen. It's available on Sky (obviously) and also on Telewest. I believe there is some extra stuff on Freeview too.

Actually, I don't think this is the case. I beleive that the current Bromley software won't run the multiscreen due to the way it's broadcast (two full-screen videos divided into quarter screens). This is different from how other multiscreen apps are broadcast, where the box is simply flicking between full-screen feeds.

I'm assuming they could launch it on Langley if they wanted to, but are choosing not to do that because they don't want to upset the Bromley people.

I don't think there is any extra stuff on Freeview, mind you, other than two News 24 screens. Cable almost always has the same video content as Sky -- up to 5 extra feeds. There is also more text-based content on cable than on either satellite or Freeview, and the ability to use cookies means that things like looking up the weather or cinema listings is much easier as it remembers the personal settings.

In fact, I think the only downside to BBCi on cable is the fact it takes so damn long to get into the service via the Bridge. An average Freeview box can load it in two seconds...

(N.B. I'm in a slightly different position to most people as I'm using the latest Telewest software (VOD not enabled yet though!). This is much more reliable and much more responsive than the old Bromley 3.1 software I was used to before. However, most of the underlying code is the same for both NTL and Telewest, so I'd imagine that the NTL 3.2 releases will also show a similar leap forward.)

[Bob]

I am also led to believe that the code for the 'new' BBCi is much leaner and therefore enables faster loading

[Jonathan David]

And can we add that the BBCi applications are written by the BBC and not NTL. So everytime they go wrong, slaging NTL off is not the first course of action.