BT Vision launches

As I am sure many of you will have heard by now, BT launched BT Vision this
week. It is a combined Freeview/PVR and Video on demand offering.

Its initially limited to BT Broadband subscribers and while the equipment
itself is free, there is an installation charge. Over time, BT plan to
remove the BT Broadband restricition and introduce a 'self install' option.
There are also no no subscription or minimum monthly payment requirements.

More at
http://www.btplc.com/News/Articles/S...3-7d6bb6aee1c6

Regards
Sunil

"Sunil Sood" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> As I am sure many of you will have heard by now, BT launched BT Vision
> this week. It is a combined Freeview/PVR and Video on demand offering.
>
> Its initially limited to BT Broadband subscribers and while the equipment
> itself is free, there is an installation charge. Over time, BT plan to
> remove the BT Broadband restricition and introduce a 'self install'
> option. There are also no no subscription or minimum monthly payment
> requirements.
>
> More at
> http://www.btplc.com/News/Articles/S...3-7d6bb6aee1c6
>

Its all very well having TV over broadband, but what about the monthly caps
on customers accounts? Video does not come slim and will quickly gobble up
the allowance. Unless its a seperate allowance?

"Beck" <beck@none> wrote in message
news:4576b107$0$8746$(E-Mail Removed)...
>
> "Sunil Sood" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>> As I am sure many of you will have heard by now, BT launched BT Vision
>> this week. It is a combined Freeview/PVR and Video on demand offering.
>>
>> Its initially limited to BT Broadband subscribers and while the equipment
>> itself is free, there is an installation charge. Over time, BT plan to
>> remove the BT Broadband restricition and introduce a 'self install'
>> option. There are also no no subscription or minimum monthly payment
>> requirements.
>>
>> More at
>> http://www.btplc.com/News/Articles/S...3-7d6bb6aee1c6
>>
>
> Its all very well having TV over broadband, but what about the monthly
> caps on customers accounts? Video does not come slim and will quickly
> gobble up the allowance. Unless its a seperate allowance?


Good point Beck.
Sunil, is there a place where we can assess the impact on monthly allowance?
For instance, I'm on Option 1 and the 2 GB allowance is fine for my needs
just now.
I've just searched on the BT Vision website and not been able to find
reference to this (that doesn't mean it's not there, I am renouned for not
being able to find the obvious :-) )

dfrog

On 6 Dec 2006, "Beck" <beck@none> wrote:

>Its all very well having TV over broadband, but what about the monthly caps
>on customers accounts? Video does not come slim and will quickly gobble up
>the allowance. Unless its a seperate allowance?

Fortunately, being a Freeview box with HD recording, much of the material
is likely to be available straight 'off air' but point taken... I don't
see how they will make money if the boxes are worth about 200 quid (the
Humax twin tuner Freeview box with 160 GB HD is about the same money)
but they allow for a "no subscription" facility (you don't have to pay
the 6 or more pounds a month fee, if you don't want the VoD options they
are providing)...

I know the user (currently) has to have a BT B a/c and to get the box
there's 90 pounds in connection and installation fees, so perhaps they
assume anyone wanting this will opt for paying X pounds a month and then
also be hit for exceeding their quota. On the subject of quotas. since
that's back to your comments, I submitted some feedback:

"You have launched "BT Vision" but there is no information on your site to
suggest how big the downloads would be. I know that different music videos
will vary in length, but you need to explain that downloading a 90 minute
film would be (for example) 750 MB.

If someone has an ADSL account with a quota of 2000 MB, they can then see
that it would only take 3 films to use up their monthly allowance."

If I see some response in the next few days, I'll post it (or at least a
precis of it, so as not to break copyright etc)...

"Beck" <beck@none> writes:

> Its all very well having TV over broadband, but what about the monthly caps
> on customers accounts? Video does not come slim and will quickly gobble up
> the allowance. Unless its a seperate allowance?

If TV over broadband is to become common then the current system of
caps will have to change. The networks will have to be upgraded to
handle the bandwidth used.

"Sunil Sood" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> As I am sure many of you will have heard by now, BT launched BT Vision
> this week. It is a combined Freeview/PVR and Video on demand offering.
>
> Its initially limited to BT Broadband subscribers and while the equipment
> itself is free, there is an installation charge. Over time, BT plan to
> remove the BT Broadband restricition and introduce a 'self install'
> option. There are also no no subscription or minimum monthly payment
> requirements.
>
> More at
> http://www.btplc.com/News/Articles/S...3-7d6bb6aee1c6
>
> Regards
> Sunil
>

Dead before it even starts, caps will see to that.

Nice idea if you have lots of money to spen on unlimited office broadband.

On 6 Dec 2006, "It's Me" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Dead before it even starts, caps will see to that.

>Nice idea if you have lots of money to spen on unlimited office broadband.

Surely whether it is "dead before it starts" depends on the type of usage
that one would have from it. While TV Replay idea isn't new (HomeChoice
ring any bells) the other things are options, and given Freeview is quite
widely used, and this unit offers time-shifting of shows, and could very
easily be a second unit in a household already using Freeview, seems to
me to be a fairly attractive add-on for those already on BTB. Knowing
a standalone unit (without any internet connectivity) is about the same
cost as they are currently charging (90 quid), the quota issue only gets
to be an issue if one subscribes to the extras and actually downloads as
well... and surely depends on what's available (someone might only choose
a fraction of the pop videos, for example, so may never hit quota limits)

It will be interesting to see whether the fee payable is intended only for
the content/licencing or also covers the downloading (it would be easy for
such downloads to not come out of routine quota traffic, by addition of a
router (linking to the pay-for-downloads hosting kit) prior to whatever
is being used to log the regular internet traffic...

ie Regular web content comes through the quota recording kit, paid-for
content for BT V bypasses quota, but gets charged via subscription/PPV.

On Wed, 6 Dec 2006 05:38:08 -0000, "Sunil Sood"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>As I am sure many of you will have heard by now, BT launched BT Vision this
>week. It is a combined Freeview/PVR and Video on demand offering.

Things is BT's download limits are quite low when video comes in to
the equation, realistically customers will have to take the top
expensive option to take advantage of video.

Geoff Lane

>
> Surely whether it is "dead before it starts" depends on the type of usage
> that one would have from it./PPV.

Yea don't use it and it wont use any bandwidth.

Use it and it will, the point was you wont be able to use it very much as
most people have caps on the amount they can download.

And if you are downloading TV and maybe HD TV it will be a very heavy use of
bandwidth.

I don't have any caps on my service but I have been telling people about
this problem for years when BT first introduced caps to DSL.

I do hope it fails and the reason is caped DSL services and it will serve
them right.

On 6 Dec 2006, "It's Me" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>... downloading TV and maybe HD TV it will be a very heavy use of bandwidth.

agreed for HDTV, not sure about the 'regular' TV - I saw one of the options
was music videos, so it depends on the number and length and sampling rates

>I don't have any caps on my service but I have been telling people about
>this problem for years when BT first introduced caps to DSL.

Most people do have some cap on their service, so point taken, it might not
take off, though it might be handled in some way to avoid coming out of the
user's quota (eg if it was passed in some different way to the exchange and
then to the user, as it is a paid-for, separate, service). I can see there
may be high demand for higher end accounts from families, or they might get
their head screwed on and simply say "no" to paying for items that could be
had off the air, or switch to Sky if they have specific interests (eg MTV
or VH1 or similar... I think there will be few takers for Channel 4 TV
shows at up to 2.99 a show... Does anyone yet pay Five for TV shows?