UK satellite TV provider, BSkyB, has launched a push-VOD service that offers a selection of the week's programs, free-of-charge, to customers equipped with its HD DVR. The service, dubbed Anytime on TV, will also shortly be made available to customers equipped with Sky's standard-definition Sky+ DVR. (Note: the service shares its branding with two existing Sky VOD services--Anytime on PC and Anytime on Mobile--which launched a little over a year ago. Anytime on PC allows Sky subscribers to access around 1,000 hours of sports coverage, movies, and entertainment, lifestyle and cultural programming; while Anytime on Mobile offers videoclips and picture downloads, and is designed in part to promote Sky's subscription based mobile TV service, which offers nearly 30 live and on-demand channels.) Like many other VOD services offered by satellite TV providers, the new service uses a specially partitioned area of the set- top box hard drive to automatically store programs for on-demand viewing (note: the customer's personal recording capacity remains unaffected). The new selection of programs is added overnight, with around 30 hours of programming available at any one time: viewers have seven days to watch programs or store them on their Sky+ planner, and, as newer programs are pushed to their set-top, older ones are automatically deleted.
In order to access the new service, customers go to their EPG and select the red button to view dedicated Anytime on TV listings. Content available on the service includes programs from Sky One, Sky Movies, Sky Sports, Sky Arts, National Geographic, The History Channel, Biography, the Crime & Investigation Network, Adventure One, Disney and Turner. Customers equipped with Sky's HD DVR can also access content from those providers' HD channels. "Sky+ has already given millions of people freedom from their TV schedule, helping viewers to enjoy more of the TV they want to watch," Stephen Van Rooyen, Sky's director of product management, said in a prepared statement. "Anytime on TV helps our customers get even more out of Sky+ by presenting them with highlights of the week's programs, to watch on-demand shows that they might not otherwise have found and which they can then transfer to their Sky+ box to series link and watch every week."
Originally Published: April 16, 2007 in [itvt] Issue 7.26 Part 2
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