Finally, the launch of the new [channel] Five stations has been announced. Five US will show, well, lots more US shows. I guess that means wall to wall CSI and Law & Order, although both series are broadcast on other channels besides Five currently. Five Life will be the lifestyle channel.
It’s not immediately obvious when the channels will launch – there doesn’t seem to be a press release at time of writing. What’s really interesting, however, is where the bandwidth for these channels is coming from.
The answer is Top-Up TV, the service that allows you to watch a handful of additional channels for a subscription fee. But Top-Up TV already has limited bandwidth, and the channels they offer, are only available at specific times. But the company has reorganised itself recently, and is completely changing the way it broadcasts with something called Top Up TV Anytime.
Currently it broadcasts nine channels over five slots at various times. With two of these channels going to Five, they’re going to be hardpushed to get any meaningful coverage of their channels in such a reduced space. Their solution seems to be to get all their customers to buy (or be given) PVRs which then record the programming for later replay. Given that the average satellite channel rebroadcasts the same programming several times throughout the day and week, I suspect that two of the channels will be used to broadcast each programme once for recording to hard-disk. You can then watch the programme at your leisure. Obviously this won’t work for Bloomberg or Eurosport since they rely on live programming. And there’s the small matter of their subscription porn channel.
This could work, but seems an expensive way of finding a solution to the problem. And the hard disk on their device is going to have to be quite large to handle all the shows you might want to see. And all those set-top box manufacturers who were persuaded to put a card-slot into their boxes are going to be a bit miffed. As are a lot of their customers – unless they give the boxes away.
Incidentally, if you want to register for more information, even as a current customer, you are ‘required’ to pass on your home phone number. Why? Is it because the concept is so different that they feel they need to explain it to each customer in person?