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NTL Incorporated, branded as ntl:, was a United States-listed British company founded in 1992, which provided
cable television
Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with broa ...
,
cable internet and fixed-line cable
telephone
A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into e ...
services. While NTL had its headquarters in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, the company's activities focused heavily on the United Kingdom, with operational headquarters in
Hook, Hampshire.
NTL became the dominant cable operator in the United Kingdom, controlling more than 90% of the market. In 2005 residential services generated 78% of NTL's revenue, and
business
Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or Trade, buying and selling Product (business), products (such as goods and Service (economics), services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for pr ...
services 22%.
In March 2006, NTL merged with fellow
cable
Cable may refer to:
Mechanical
* Nautical cable, an assembly of three or more ropes woven against the weave of the ropes, rendering it virtually waterproof
* Wire rope, a type of rope that consists of several strands of metal wire laid into a hel ...
telecom company
Telewest
Telewest (previously Telewest Broadband and Telewest Communications) was a cable internet, broadband internet, telephone supplier and cable television provider in the United Kingdom. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange, and was also o ...
, and created 'NTL:Telewest', which then also merged with
Virgin Mobile UK
Virgin Mobile is a mobile phone service provider operating in the United Kingdom. It is owned by Virgin Media which is part of Virgin Media O2. The company was launched by Virgin Group in 1999 as the world's first mobile virtual network operato ...
and
Virgin.net
Virgin.net was an Internet service provider (ISP) operating in the United Kingdom. It launched in November 1996. Once a joint venture between NTL and the Virgin Group, the ISP became wholly owned by NTL in September 2004.
The company sold a range ...
in June 2006, creating the UK's first "
quadruple play In telecommunications, quadruple play or quad play is a marketing term combining the triple play service of broadband Internet access, television and telephone with wireless service provisions. This service set is also sometimes referred to as "The ...
" telecom provider, offering television, internet, landline phone and mobile phone services. In February 2007, NTL:Telewest was rebranded as
Virgin Media
Virgin Media is a British telecommunications company which provides telephone, Cable television, television and Internet access, internet services in the United Kingdom. Its headquarters are at Green Park in Reading, Berkshire, Reading, Engla ...
.
History
1992–2006
Barclay Knapp
Barclay Knapp is a Senior Fellow in the Center for Financial Economics at The Johns Hopkins University, and has formed Charles Street Partners, to pursue financing and management opportunities in the telecommunications industry. He co-founded Cellu ...
and George Blumenthal, the founders of American cellular network company Cellular Communications, Inc. (sold to
Airtouch
AirTouch Communications was an American wireless telephone service provider, created as a spin-off on Pacific Telesis on April 1, 1994. Its headquarters were in One California in the Financial District, San Francisco, California. After a series ...
in 1996), established International CableTel in 1993 to take advantage of the
deregulation
Deregulation is the process of removing or reducing state regulations, typically in the economic sphere. It is the repeal of governmental regulation of the economy. It became common in advanced industrial economies in the 1970s and 1980s, as a ...
of the UK cable market. Initially, Cabletel acquired local cable franchises covering
Guildford
Guildford ()
is a town in west Surrey, around southwest of central London. As of the 2011 census, the town has a population of about 77,000 and is the seat of the wider Borough of Guildford, which had around inhabitants in . The name "Guildf ...
and parts of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. In 1996 CableTel acquired National Transcommunications Limited (NTL), the
privatised
Privatization (also privatisation in British English) can mean several different things, most commonly referring to moving something from the public sector into the private sector. It is also sometimes used as a synonym for deregulation when ...
UK
Independent Broadcasting Authority
The Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) was the regulatory body in the United Kingdom for commercial television (ITV and Channel 4 and limited satellite television regulation – cable television was the responsibility of the Cable Authorit ...
transmission-network. In May 1998 CableTel adopted "NTL" as its new name.
The company spent heavily: both on expanding its network and on acquiring rivals (in 1999, it acquired
Cambridge Cable
Cambridge Cable Ltd. was a limited company engaged in the provision of early video on demand. It provided cable infrastructure in the UK as part of the Cambridge Digital Interactive Television Trial (Cambridge iTV trial/Cambridge Cable Project). ...
, one of the earliest digital networks, that had been installed across the university city ten years earlier). The company also began to expand outside the UK in 2000, buying into markets on continental Europe and Ireland.
A
collapse of the telecommunications markets from mid-2000 dealt a serious blow to the company. This, combined with NTL's rapid acquisition of local cable-operators, led to severe integration problems. NTL, struggling to cope with rapid expansion and suffering from significant
customer-service problems, then had to contend with the setting up in November 2002 of one of the UK's first consumer
lobby-groups,
nthellworld
nthellworld was one of the first mainstream independent consumer Lobbying, lobby groups in the United Kingdom, whose main focal point was British Internet Service Provider, ISP and Cable television company NTL:Telewest, ntl Group. nthellworld.c ...
, with
ntl:hell following shortly after. As a complementary move, a team of NTL employees founded the website, Chetnet.co.uk, to provide customers with a site focused on providing expert advice on its subject-matter, based on factual information, without the emotion or speculation of the "lobby groups".
Devalued
In macroeconomics and modern monetary policy, a devaluation is an official lowering of the value of a country's currency within a fixed exchange-rate system, in which a monetary authority formally sets a lower exchange rate of the national curren ...
and struggling with debts of around $18bn, NTL had to seek
Chapter 11
Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code (Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, wheth ...
bankruptcy-protection in May 2002 in order to organise a refinancing deal. The company did not emerge from protection until January 2003, having converted around $11bn of debt into shares – technically, this amounted to the largest
debt default in US corporate history. The company reduced its debt to $6.4bn. A re-organisation split NTL itself into NTL Inc. (covering the UK and Irish markets) and NTL Europe Inc. (for the French, Swiss and German parts of the corporation). New executives replaced the NTL president, CEO and co-founder Barclay Knapp, as well as
Stephen Carter, the
MD and
COO
COO or coo may refer to:
Business
* Certificate of origin, used in international trade
* Chief operating officer or chief operations officer, high-ranking corporate official
* Concept of operations, used in Systems Engineering Management Process
...
.
After exiting from Chapter 11 protection NTL produced an operating profit. In 2004, it announced plans to split the broadcasting division off from the main company. In December 2004, NTL sold its broadcast-unit to a consortium led by
Macquarie Communications Infrastructure Group (MCG) for £1.27 billion. Macquarie renamed the division ''
Arqiva
Arqiva () is a British telecommunications company which provides infrastructure, broadcast transmission and smart meter facilities in the United Kingdom. The company is headquartered at the former Independent Broadcasting Authority headquart ...
'' in May 2005. This sale allowed NTL to focus on its "core businesses" of providing communications packages and cable services.
In late 2004, NTL purchased the remaining shares of the
Internet service provider
An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...
(ISP)
virgin.net
Virgin.net was an Internet service provider (ISP) operating in the United Kingdom. It launched in November 1996. Once a joint venture between NTL and the Virgin Group, the ISP became wholly owned by NTL in September 2004.
The company sold a range ...
, originally a joint venture between NTL and
Richard Branson
Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson (born 18 July 1950) is a British billionaire, entrepreneur, and business magnate. In the 1970s he founded the Virgin Group, which today controls more than 400 companies in various fields.
Branson expressed ...
's
Virgin Group
Virgin Group Ltd. is a British multinational venture capital conglomerate founded by Richard Branson and Nik Powell in February 1970.
Virgin Group's date of incorporation is listed as 1989 by the Companies House, who class it as a holding c ...
.
By 2005, its UK network consisted of a 7,800 km
fibre
Fiber or fibre (from la, fibra, links=no) is a natural or artificial substance that is significantly longer than it is wide. Fibers are often used in the manufacture of other materials. The strongest engineering materials often incorporate ...
backbone
The backbone is the vertebral column of a vertebrate.
Arts, entertainment, and media Film
* ''Backbone'' (1923 film), a 1923 lost silent film starring Alfred Lunt
* ''Backbone'' (1975 film), a 1975 Yugoslavian drama directed by Vlatko Gilić
M ...
with the potential to reach 8.4 million residential homes and around 610,000 businesses. In January of that year, NTL started rolling out
video on demand
Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos without a traditional video playback device and the constraints of a typical static broadcasting schedule. In the 20th century, broadcasting in the form of o ...
. With content selected by NTL, this service covered genres including music videos, children's programming and
adult entertainment
The sex industry (also called the sex trade) consists of businesses that either directly or indirectly provide sex-related products and services or adult entertainment. The industry includes activities involving direct provision of sex-related ...
, as an extension to the basic 'pay per view' services the company offered for film and sport content. The new service allowed customers to rewind, fast forward and pause content.
Despite
NTL Ireland
NTL Communications (Ireland) Limited was a cable television and Multichannel Multipoint Distribution Service (MMDS) company in Ireland. As of 2005 it was owned by Liberty Global Europe (see history, below), having been divested by NTL. It was r ...
turning a profit, in May 2005, NTL sold their
Dublin
Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...
,
Galway
Galway ( ; ga, Gaillimh, ) is a City status in Ireland, city in the West Region, Ireland, West of Ireland, in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Connacht, which is the county town of County Galway. It lies on the River Corrib between Lo ...
, and
Waterford
"Waterford remains the untaken city"
, mapsize = 220px
, pushpin_map = Ireland#Europe
, pushpin_map_caption = Location within Ireland##Location within Europe
, pushpin_relief = 1
, coordinates ...
cable business (which they had acquired in 1999 for €825 million from the Irish government) to
UGC Europe
UGC may refer to:
Science and technology
* Universal gravitational constant G, in physics
* Uppsala General Catalogue, an astronomical catalogue of galaxies
* UGC, a codon for cysteine
* Unique games conjecture, a conjecture in computational com ...
for €325 million – this after having spent in excess of €100 million on network infrastructure, resulting in a loss of €500 million, more than 50% of the purchase price.
Liberty Global
Liberty Global plc is a British-Dutch-American multinational telecommunications company with headquarters in London, Amsterdam and Denver. Its respective legal names are Liberty Global Plc, Liberty Global B.V. and Liberty Global, Inc., with ...
continued to use the NTL brand in Ireland, but was eventually merged with
Chorus Communications
Chorus, officially Chorus Communication Limited, was a communications provider in Ireland offering internet, television and telephone services. It was owned by Liberty Global Europe and ultimately controlled by John C. Malone's Liberty Media.
...
and rebranded as
UPC Ireland
Virgin Media Ireland is Liberty Global's telecommunications operation in Ireland. It is the largest digital cable television provider within the country. As of 31 December 2014, the company offers broadband internet, digital television and d ...
in May 2010.
By July 2005, NTL had cut its debt to £1.445 billion with an operating cashflow of £178 million. The company had 3.2 million customers buying at least one service from them, with the 1.4 million subscribers to
broadband
In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections. ...
services making NTL the
market leader
Market dominance describes when a firm can control markets. A dominant firm possesses the power to affect competition and influence market price. A firms' dominance is a measure of the power of a brand, product, service, or firm, relative to ...
in this field.
Telewest
NTL/Telewest merger
From late 2003 discussions commenced on a merger between Telewest and NTL. Thanks to their geographically different areas, NTL and Telewest had co-operated previously, as in re-directing potential customers living outside their respective areas. On 3 October 2005, NTL announced a
USD$
The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
6 billion purchase of Telewest, forming one of the largest media companies in the UK. The merger agreement as structured would have left NTL having to negotiate with
BBC Worldwide
BBC Worldwide Ltd. was the wholly owned commercial subsidiary of the BBC, formed out of a restructuring of its predecessor BBC Enterprises in January 1995. The company monetises BBC brands, selling BBC and other British programming for broadcas ...
, the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
's commercial arm, due to a change-of-ownership clause written into the agreement for
UKTV
UKTV Media Limited, simply known as UKTV, is a British multi-channel broadcaster, which, since 2019, has been wholly owned by BBC Studios (formerly BBC Worldwide), a commercial subsidiary of the BBC. It was formed on 1 November 1992 through ...
, a joint venture with Telewest's
Flextech
Living TV Group was a British television consortium originally called Flextech before becoming a subsidiary of British Sky Broadcasting, with Challenge still broadcasting.
Living TV Group had several owned channels, available in the United K ...
content division. To prevent this, Telewest instead acquired NTL.
The parties completed the merger on 3 March 2006, making the merged company the UK's largest cable-provider, with more than 90% of the market. Once merged, the combined company renamed itself to ntl:Telewest,
with ex-NTL shareholders controlling 75% of the stock and ex-Telewest shareholders 25%. Nine of the eleven directors of the new board came from NTL and two from Telewest.
Virgin Mobile merger
In December 2005 NTL and
Virgin Mobile
Virgin Mobile is a wireless communications brand used by seven independent brand-licensees worldwide. Virgin Mobile branded wireless communications services are available in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Colombia, Chile, Kuwait, Saudi Ara ...
announced that talks had taken place regarding a merger.
Virgin Mobile's independent directors rejected the original bid of £817 million ($1.4 billion), taking the view that NTL's bid "undervalued the business". Sir
Richard Branson
Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson (born 18 July 1950) is a British billionaire, entrepreneur, and business magnate. In the 1970s he founded the Virgin Group, which today controls more than 400 companies in various fields.
Branson expressed ...
reportedly expressed confidence that a re-structured deal could go ahead, and in January 2006 NTL increased its offer to £961m (372p per share). On 4 April 2006, NTL Incorporated announced a £962.4m recommended offer for Virgin Mobile. According to reports, Branson accepted a mix of shares and cash, making him a 10.7% shareholder of the combined company.
The takeover, which was completed on 4 July 2006, created the UK's first '
quadruple play In telecommunications, quadruple play or quad play is a marketing term combining the triple play service of broadband Internet access, television and telephone with wireless service provisions. This service set is also sometimes referred to as "The ...
' media company, bringing together television, Internet broadband, mobile-phone and fixed-line phone services. The deal included a 30-year exclusive branding agreement that saw NTL adopt the Virgin name across its consumer operations as it merged operations with its current Telewest brand. As a result, on 8 November 2006, NTL announced it would change its name to
Virgin Media Plc
Virgin Media is a British telecommunications company which provides telephone, television and internet services in the United Kingdom. Its headquarters are at Green Park in Reading, England. It is owned by Virgin Media O2, a 50:50 joint ventu ...
.
Proposed ITV merger
In November 2006, NTL announced that it had approached commercial television broadcaster
ITV
ITV or iTV may refer to:
ITV
*Independent Television (ITV), a British television network, consisting of:
** ITV (TV network), a free-to-air national commercial television network covering the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islan ...
about a proposed merger.
BSkyB
Sky UK Limited is a British broadcaster and telecommunications company that provides television and broadband Internet services, fixed line and mobile telephone services to consumers and businesses in the United Kingdom. It is a subsidiary of ...
effectively blocked the merger on 12 November 2006, when it controversially bought a 17.9% stake in ITV plc, a move that attracted anger from NTL shareholder
Richard Branson
Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson (born 18 July 1950) is a British billionaire, entrepreneur, and business magnate. In the 1970s he founded the Virgin Group, which today controls more than 400 companies in various fields.
Branson expressed ...
and an investigation from media and telecoms regulator
Ofcom
The Office of Communications, commonly known as Ofcom, is the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom.
Ofcom has wide-ranging powers acros ...
. On 6 December 2006, NTL announced that it had complained to the
Office of Fair Trading
The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) was a non-ministerial government department of the United Kingdom, established by the Fair Trading Act 1973, which enforced both consumer protection and competition law, acting as the United Kingdom's economic ...
about BSkyB's move, and that it would withdraw its attempt to buy ITV plc, stating that it did not believe that it could currently make a deal on favourable terms.
Services
Internet
NTL offered
broadband Internet access
Internet access is the ability of individuals and organizations to connect to the Internet using computer terminals, computers, and other devices; and to access services such as email and the World Wide Web. Internet access is sold by Internet ...
connections through
cable
Cable may refer to:
Mechanical
* Nautical cable, an assembly of three or more ropes woven against the weave of the ropes, rendering it virtually waterproof
* Wire rope, a type of rope that consists of several strands of metal wire laid into a hel ...
. The service operates through SACMs (Stand-alone
cable modem
A cable modem is a type of network bridge that provides bi-directional data communication via radio frequency channels on a hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC), radio frequency over glass (RFoG) and coaxial cable infrastructure. Cable modems are primaril ...
s) and
set-top box
A set-top box (STB), also colloquially known as a cable box and historically television decoder, is an information appliance device that generally contains a TV-tuner input and displays output to a television set and an external source of sign ...
es (STBs).
In NTL areas customers could also access a 512 kbit/s download-speed; and both NTL and Telewest offer
dial-up
Dial-up Internet access is a form of Internet access that uses the facilities of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to establish a connection to an Internet service provider (ISP) by dialing a telephone number on a conventional telepho ...
Internet services on a pay-as-you-go basis, or at a fixed monthly fee of £14.99 for unlimited usage.
The broadband services did not have a bandwidth-cap or a fair-usage policy; this means that customers have unlimited usage and need pay no extra charges related to the amount of data downloaded. However NTL has admitted introducing
traffic shaping
Traffic shaping is a bandwidth management technique used on computer networks which delays some or all datagrams to bring them into compliance with a desired ''traffic profile''. Traffic shaping is used to optimize or guarantee performance, improv ...
.
NTL started trialling 20 Mbit/s, and temporarily upgraded some 10 Mbit/s subscribers to this speed in October 2006. Furthermore, NTL started conducting trials of a 100Mbit broadband service on its cable network.
After trials in the Guildford area from mid-1999, NTL launched its original broadband services at the same time that NTL acquired the Cable business of Cable and Wireless (early 2000). In the "original NTL" (also known as "Langley") areas, NTL has always supplied broadband services via
DOCSIS
Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) is an international telecommunications standard that permits the addition of high-bandwidth data transfer to an existing cable television (CATV) system. It is used by many cable televisio ...
cable-modems. In these areas the digital television
set-top box
A set-top box (STB), also colloquially known as a cable box and historically television decoder, is an information appliance device that generally contains a TV-tuner input and displays output to a television set and an external source of sign ...
es used an incompatible standard,
DAVIC DAVIC, Digital Audio Video Council, was founded in 1994 with the aim of promoting the success of interactive digital audio-visual applications and services by promulgating specifications of open interfaces and protocols that maximise interoperabilit ...
.
Initially, NTL decided to terminate service to approximately 90,000 ex-Cable and Wireless subscribers on short notice. This threatened to leave customers stranded and without access to their email or websites and was due to NTL's lack of infrastructure capability in some areas. Before termination of services, Boltblue struck a deal with NTL and Cable and Wireless Communications to save 90,000
and later an additional 210,000 customers. The roll-out of broadband services in the ex-Cable and Wireless franchises started in mid 2001.
NTL provided ex-Cable and Wireless subscribers with broadband through the set-top box (STB) also used for
digital television
Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals using digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier analog television technology which used analog signals. At the time of its development it was considered an innovative advanc ...
services, adopting the rationale that subscribers could self-install. Initially, NTL supplied a "Self Install Kit" consisting of connecting cable, adapters and an install CD. Following demonstrated problems, NTL gradually introduced cable modems and phased out the self-install approach. The
Pace
Pace or paces may refer to:
Business
*Pace (transit), a bus operator in the suburbs of Chicago, US
* Pace Airlines, an American charter airline
*Pace Foods, a maker of a popular brand of salsa sold in North America, owned by Campbell Soup Compan ...
STBs proved highly problematic, exhibiting two major flaws.
Firstly, large numbers of connections (for example, those with
peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network. They are said to form a peer-to-peer n ...
(P2P) software) would cause the connection to slow down and eventually freeze the modem part of the STB (also required for interactive TV services, which suffered a similar effect when downloading). Customers in these circumstances had to re-boot the STB.
Secondly, the single processor and sharing the internal modem between television and broadband services made the television part of the box slow and unresponsive, for example making it extremely difficult to change channel using the remote. This became particularly evident when using the lower "Tiers of Service" such the 128 kbit/s downstream 64 kbit/s upstream, as the digital television set-top box without broadband service actually enjoyed a 256 kbit/s upstream.
Although capable of higher speeds (up to 4 Mbit/s), NTL did not make speeds higher than 1 Mbit/s available due to degradation of the DTV service.
NTL eventually replaced the Pace set-top boxes with
Samsung
The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...
models that used a dual-processor architecture, overcoming the shortcomings of the Pace, and capable of much better downstream performance. However, with the advent of higher "Tiers of Service" of 10 Mbit/s downstream and higher, plus the reducing cost of NTL's cable modems (supplied by Ambit Broadband) NTL now supplies all subscribers with cable modems.
The NTL network runs through transparent proxy servers. Up to 15 server addresses host each area. These transparent proxy servers also override the user's
hosts file
The computer file hosts is an operating system file that maps hostnames to IP addresses. It is a plain text file. Originally a file named HOSTS.TXT was manually maintained and made available via file sharing by Stanford Research Institute for the ...
and prevent manual
DNS
The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed naming system for computers, services, and other resources in the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It associates various information with domain names assigned to ...
updates. This makes it easier for NTL to provide a more reliable connection as well as being able to monitor traffic requirements in each area. This also causes many problems for websites which record IP addresses to ban and/or track users. This means that if a website bans one offender, it bans everyone in the same area. Also, many on-line games automatically ban IP addresses with multiple usernames associated with them. Small-scale games do not cause too many problems, but when friends attempt to spread the game around, the system prevents everyone (including the original player) from using the game.
On the other hand, advanced users can easily create a large number of illegitimate accounts on the aforementioned websites, allowing one user both to prevent all other users on the NTL network using the game, as well as to become untraceable.
NTL has used MAC addresses to track and register customers to the NTL internet service. As NTL had not supported the use of routers, or Xbox on the minority Set Top Box based Broadband Internet service, users had to use a clone MAC address feature to connect to the Internet when using an STB. This has become a common problem for people wishing to connect their Xbox to the existing internet connection through a router or PC connected to their STB, if they fail to use the official registration process. (These comments do not apply to the majority (>90%) use of cable modems).
Television
The digital television service offered a number of different products including true
video on demand
Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos without a traditional video playback device and the constraints of a typical static broadcasting schedule. In the 20th century, broadcasting in the form of o ...
, a
PVR, and
HDTV
High-definition television (HD or HDTV) describes a television system which provides a substantially higher image resolution than the previous generation of technologies. The term has been used since 1936; in more recent times, it refers to the g ...
. On 1 September 2006, NTL introduced the FreeTV digital package to its telephone subscribers free of charge. However, value-pack customers lost their value-pack discounts if they integrate the FreeTV deal into their existing packages.
PVR and high definition services
NTL launched
TV Drive, its
high-definition television (HDTV) and Digital Video Recorder (
PVR) service in
Glasgow
Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popul ...
and
Teesside
Teesside () is a built-up area around the River Tees in the north of England, split between County Durham and North Yorkshire. The name was initially used as a county borough in the North Riding of Yorkshire.
Historically a hub for heavy manu ...
on 16 November 2006. The service relied on the service of the same name offered in NTL's Telewest areas. The service used a new
PVR set-top-box, with three tuners and a 160
GB hard disk
A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnet ...
for up to 80 hours recording. The presence of three tuners meant that the TV Drive could record two channels at the same time while watching a third. This contrasts with most other PVR systems such as
Sky+
The sky is an unobstructed view upward from the surface of the Earth. It includes the atmosphere of Earth, atmosphere and outer space. It may also be considered a place between the ground and outer space, thus distinct from outer space.
In th ...
, which can only have two tuners.
Video on demand
NTL started to roll out its
Video on Demand
Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos without a traditional video playback device and the constraints of a typical static broadcasting schedule. In the 20th century, broadcasting in the form of o ...
(VoD) service branded "''NTL On Demand''". NTL On Demand uses the ''Teleport'' system on Telewest's network. In contrast to
Sky
The sky is an unobstructed view upward from the surface of the Earth. It includes the atmosphere and outer space. It may also be considered a place between the ground and outer space, thus distinct from outer space.
In the field of astronomy, ...
which, due to technical limitations, could only provide near-VOD services, NTL On Demand provided a true VoD system. The service allowed customers of NTL Digital television to download programmes as and when they want to watch them from servers at the customer's local
head-end. As the broadcaster automatically stored content on NTL's servers, it removed the need to pre-record many programmes. Users could search through a large library of programmes and watch them when they want to as part of their subscription. This library included a free 7-day watch-again feature for TV-programmes produced by the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
,