PVR Wire

If you were lucky enough to receive a PVR-related product for Christmas, but you're finding difficulty figuring out how to use it, then here's some handy numbers and websites for you to try out before losing your marbles.

Sky+: The customer service number at Sky can vary in the waiting times, from as low as five minutes, to up to an hour. However, they tend to be quiet helpful and knowledgeable -- and if you're not getting satisfaction, insist on a engineer coming out to visit. But make sure you do have a fault, or you could end up being charged if you've done something stupid like taken the batteries out of your remote. Customer service ebsite: www.sky.com. Phone: 08705 800 800 for Sky+ support or 8702 43 5000 for other technical enquiries.

Telewest TVDrive: most people who have a Telewest/NTL product also have the telephone as part of the deal. If so, just dial 150 from your phone and follow the instructions to find the service helpdesk that you need. If you don't have the phone, try the FAQ section first or phone 0845 142 0000.

If you picked up a Humax PVR, try out their website first: www.humaxdigital.com/uk or phone 0208 744 5510. You can also email them on: sales-info@humax-digital.co.uk

If you received a Topfield PVR, try their website: www.topfield.co.uk/ or visit their forum, which has a small community of people ready to help out with any problems.

Most importantly, don't lose the plot if you're starting to get frustrated by a problem you can't resolve. I usually find that obsessing over it is often the best way to lose the affections of your closest family members -- while a simple process of taking a break and then methodically working your way through the issue usually brings about the best results.

If you're really, really stuck - just email us using the contact link here on the site (or comment on this entry) and we'll do our very best to help out or point you in the right direction.

Whatever you do, enjoy your holiday period and your PVR gift.

1. Sky HD. If there's one present I'd really love someone to buy me this Christmas, it's BSkyB's news HD service. It's a Sky+ PVR with 160GB of storage capacity (around 80 hours) and it displays tons of Sky's content in glorious HD (presuming you have an HD capable TV. It'll cost you £299 for the box, £60 for installation and an extra £10 per month on top of your subscription, depending on the channels you already receive. More: www.sky.com/hd

2. Topfield TF5800PVR 160GB Freeview PVR. A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of ordering one of these top-notch Freeview PVRs for the purposes of my job. It's a twin-tuner unit with a 160GB hard drive and a fairly easy-to-use setup and EPG. The only drawbacks are a slow reaction time on the remote, but it also has the added bonus of a USB connection, which comes in handy for moving videos around on to portable devices. You should expect to pay around £250, but it's worth every penny. More: Amazon UK.

3. Telewest TV Drive. If you're an NTL or Telewest customer in the UK, and you don't yet have a PVR, but you're sick of their basic on-demand service, you should consider treating yourself this Christmas by upgrading to TV Drive. It has a twin tuner, 80 hour capacity, 8-day EPG and series link facility. Oh, and it does HD too. Subscriptions start at an additional £10 per month, with no connection fee. More: Telewest UK.

4. Humax PVR800T PVR. If the Topfield doesn't take your fancy, you might want to consider the Humax PVR800T. It has pretty much all the same function as the Topfield TF5800, but with a slightly smaller HDD (80GB) and can only record one Freeview channel at a time. Expect to pay around £130.

It's not exactly the same as having a PVR, but on-demand content via your cable TV service is pretty much as close as you'll get to "personal" video recording.

Here in the UK, NTL/Telewest has been offering on-demand content from the BBC, and other broadcasters, for quite some time via a fairly easy-to-use catch-up service.

The company has now added UK broadcaster Channel Four to the mix, as part of a three-year deal which will include classic shows like Shameless, Queer As Folk, Drop The Dead Donkey and the highly-popular Jamie's School Dinners.

Of course, it'll also include a catch-up service for Channel Four's regular, popular shows like Hollyoakes and Deal or No Deal, but it's certainly something to add to the mix if you're considering getting cable over satellite.

If you live in the UK, and you're contemplating getting yourself a PVR -- perhaps even a Sky+ box -- then you probably won't find a better reason than this for the next 12 months: Lost is moving from Channel Four to Sky One at the start of the next series.

To put our US-readers in the picture: Channel Four is the 'fourth' terrestrial TV channel in the UK. It's free to everyone with an aerial on the roof of their house, it appears on Freeview (as well as on digital platforms like cable TV and satellite) and exists as one of the major commercial competitors to the BBC.

However, BSkyB's crown jewel is their mainstream channel, Sky One. On Sky One, you tend to find shows like Eureka, 24, Enterprise and Battlestar Galactica - the prime-time US shows which would normally appear on terrestrial television first, before being snapped up by Rupert Murdoch's cash-flush broadcasting empire for twice the asking price.

Well, it's happened again. It started with Star Trek: The Next Generation, moved on to X-Files, The Simpsons and Buffy, and now the world's most popualar TV show, Lost, has been snatched from Channel Four, with series 3 set to appear on Sky One in the next few months. (I could have set things up nicely with a dumb headline like 'Channel Four loses Lost', but decided not to)

Oh, and Sky One is only available if you have a BSkyB sateliite TV reciever or digital cable.

And if you're planning on getting yourself a sattelite subscription, you'd be as well just getting Sky+ (or NTL's TVDrive, for that matter).

That way, you'll never miss an episode.

I know I won't.

If you're one of the many subscribers to NTL Telewest's TVDrive service, you might notice a few changes, since they recently updated the software running the popular PVR.

Most of the changes in the recent code-drop are bug fixes, but some enhancements are also apparent in the update, including a widescreen output option for archiving and stretching for 4:3 pictures.

It should also be easier to operate HD mode and a new audio option forces the box to output in Dolby Digital 5.1.

A few bugs still exist, and will probably be handled in the next update.

At home, I have a BSkyB Sky+ PVR subsbscription, but I use NTL Telewest for my DSL internet connection, partly because it's faster, more reliable, and cheaper than the alternatives.

Imagine how annoyed I was when BSkyB announced that it was offering free 2MB broadband with all basic Sky subscriptions?

Well, here's some news that made me happy: UK cable TV company NTL Telewest has decided to compete directly with BSkyB and BT by bundling some freebies with the rest of its digital services.

If you're a subscriber to any of Telewest's telephone packages, you can take advantage of a new offer to get free TV, which includes their TVDrive PVR/on-demand service.

Even if you don't want the full-on PVR, you can still get the basic TV package, which includes all of the 30+ Freeview channels, and access to Telewest's catch-up service, which allows users to watch programmes they've missed on a sort-of on-demand function.

A report entitled 2020 Future Vision, compiled by U.K. cable TV company NTL Telewest is predicting the death of the traditional TV, with television screens occupying an entire wall by 2020, and people watching news reports on the side of a cereal packet.

Based on the views of "futurologists, consumer technology experts and design gurus", the report also suggests that Internet access "will be available through connected displays embedded in magazine pages" and the traditional method of television broadcast scheduling will be fully replaced by on-demand services.

The last part is the bit that caught my eye, "by 2020 there will be only one television channel, yours."

Of all the bug-eyed predictions in the report, this is the one that strikes me as the most likely to come to fruition, but it'll probably happen within the next five to ten years, not 14.

The growth of PVRs and IPTV is picking up pace, and pretty soon the concept of scheduling is going to be irrelevant as people become more accustomed to time-shifting (and place-shifting), cutting out the crap and concentrating on the things they like, and not the things the networks want them to watch.

You can read the entire report here.

Rumors are starting to circulate about NTL/Telewest's plans for services during the Fifa World Cup during the summer.

The company has already announced a new broadband website featuring World Cup news and competitions, in addition to some soccer-related on-demand movies and songs, but when questioned about the availability of World Cup matches on-demand via the cable television service, they wouldn't confirm or deny any firm plans.

If you live in Europe, you'll be able to watch most of the World Cup matches from Germany in the late afternoon or evening, but viewers in the USA will probably be best to set recordings for the games, which will undoubtedly be broadcast at early hours.

BSkyB has been making a lot of noise about the forthcoming launch of their HD service in the U.K., but cable company Telewest (soon to be NTL/Telewest when the merger is complete) has launched their own HD PVR service a few months in advance of Sky's much-anticipated Sky Plus HD.

The Register were lucky enough to receive a review box and duly posted a review of the hard disk based video recorder service, TVDrive, which went on sale to customers in Telewest-enabled areas around the U.K. last week.

With a subscription charge of £15 per month (in addition to the standard cable TV package charge), or £10 a month if you subscribe to Telewest's most expensive TV package, it's slightly more expensive than a standard Sky Plus subscrition, but it appears to have more to offer than anything currently available via BSkyB.

The big difference for The Reg was the inclusion of HD to the package, along with an impressive 160 GB storage capacity, currently the same as Sky Plus (although, Sky customers can only access 80 GB of the 160 at the moment) - and no fewer than three tuners, to allow users to record two channels while watching a third.

Add in in-vision EPG browsing, manual recording options and in-progress recording over-rides, and all of a sudden James Murdoch has a race on his hands to make sure his own product meets standards set down set by his cable TV rivals. 

U.K.-based cable TV company NTL/Telewest (currently in the process of merging the two) has launched the branding for its TVDrive digital personal video recorder service, which was developed by design agency Coley Porter Bell.

The TVDrive service is already on trial in enabled areas across the country, and has been touted as a credible alternative to BSkyB's Sky Plus service, although the jury is still out on whether it can match Sky Plus feature-for-feature.

The branding seems to be pinning its hopes on a catchy name (along the line of "Sky Plus", "TiVo", "PVR", "iPod" -- you get the picture) by pushing the three-letter-acronym 'TVD'. (Personally, I reckon is sounds more like a disease than a PVR service, but there you go).

If anyone has any experience of TVDrive -- or TVD -- let us know using the comment option below.

In a statement released earlier today, the U.K Office of Fair Trading (OFT) announced that it has cleared NTL's $6bn (£3.4bn) takeover of rival cable TV operator Telewest and BSkyB's £211m purchase of internet company Easynet, but said there was justification in referring the deals to the Competition Commission.

The deals will give a combined NTL/Telewest company around five million customers across the U.K., nearing BSkyB's eight million.

Both companies are gearing up for a busy year in 2006, with NTL weighing up a takeover of Virgin Mobile for around £800m, and BSkyB's purchase of Easynet expanding its content proposition to Internet delivery.

There's been a lot of news over the past two days about a confirmed £817m takeover approach for Richard Branson's Virgin Mobile company (U.K.) by cable telco NTL (who are also in the process of a £6bn merger with rival cable firm Telewest).

Reports suggest that Branson is aiming for the "quadruple play" market, offering users an all-encompassing TV, broadband, fixed-line and mobile service -- possibly including exclusive sport content and on-demand/movie download services -- but as Tim Weber of BBC News suggests, we've been here before; Vizzavi, the ill-fated alliance of Vodafone, Canal plus and Vivendi Universal and the AOL/Time Warner merger being the best two examples.