This summer Simplifydigital is spreading the summer cheer with some great deals from Orange, TalkTalk and 3 Mobile.

Firstly, let’s take a look at Orange’s broadband and home phone bundle.

Orange Home Max

• Broadband with up to 8Mbs speed
• 10Gb download limit
• Line rental
• Evening and weekend calls
• Anytime calls to UK and 30 international destinations via Second Line

Usual price for existing Orange mobile customers is £14.67 per month.

With Simplifydigital you get all this for £11.90 per month if you order through our call centre.

Standard price for non mobile customers is £24.47 per month.

With Simplifydigital you get all this for £21.69 per month through our call centre or online.

TalkTalk

TalkTalk offer a great bundle offer for families that like to download music and movies on the internet. With the TalkTalk essentials bundle with Anytime calls boost you get:

• Broadband with up to 8Mbs speed
• 40Gb download limit
• Line rental
• Anytime calls to UK landlines

Standard price is £21.74 per month.

With Simplifydigital you get all this for £20.63 per month through our call centre or online.

Mobile broadband

Mobile broadband used to be for the light to moderate user but 3 has changed all that.

On 3’s Broadband Max plan you get:

• A massive 15GB monthly data allowance
• Free dongle
• Up to 3.6Mb mobile broadband
• Access to the UK’s widest 3G network

Standard price is £15 per month.

With Simplifydigital you get all this for £12.92 per month through our call centre only.

If you want any more information on the above deals or want to compare any other broadband, TV or home phone packages click here or call 0800 1388 388.

Written by chris

Carphone Warehouse’s offer to buy Tiscali’s UK broadband, digital TV and home phone business has been given the formal go-ahead by the European regulators. The European Commission said yesterday that the transaction would not damage competition.

Carphone will become the UK’s second largest broadband provider (after BT) with approximately 4.3m customers spread between TalkTalk, AOL Broadband and now Tiscali.  They agreed to pay £236m ($388m) for the UK assets of Tiscali, the Italian telecoms company.

This deal should be good news for existing Tiscali customers, many of whom have complained about the poor levels of customer service.  This has been partly due to a lack of investment in customer service infrastructure as a result of Tiscali’s poor financial situation. But now Tiscali is to join TalkTalk we suspect that customer service will improve significantly. 

Tiscali is likely to remain as a standalone brand for the foreseeable future, but may then get folded into the TalkTalk umbrella brand. 

Tiscali also brings with it Tiscali TV, a small but interesting IPTV business, which presents TalkTalk with a great opportunity to add content distribution to their broadband business. 

This is a path currently being actively pursued by Virgin Media who recently announced a content deal with Universal Music to offer a digital music service which enables Virgin Media broadband customers to both stream and download as many music tracks and albums as they want from Universal Music’s entire catalogue, in return for a monthly subscription fee.

If you need deciding between broadband providers, we can help you to compare broadband providers’ prices and package features. Our experts are available free on 0800 1 388 388 or at www.simplifydigital.co.uk

Written by Charlie

The House of Commons Business and Enterprise Committee is to consider whether the Digital Britain Report’s commitment to provide up to 2Mb/sec broadband to all UK homes is “ambitious enough”.

It will also consider whether the proposed broadband tax is fair.  The broadband tax will mean anyone in the UK with a fixed line (copper) home phone will have to pay an extra 50p a month on their bill.

The money raised is intended to fund next-generation fibre-optic broadband rollout to the 30-40% of the UK population that are likely to be bypassed by BT and Virgin Media’s current fibre-optic broadband roll-out plans.

We think the Committee is absolutely right to question Digital Britain’s universal broadband commitment of up to 2 Mb/sec broadband in the UK.  The current average UK broadband speed is just 3.6 Mb/sec and this is way short of average broadband speeds in competing Asian economies such as Japan, which has an average of over 90 Mb/sec.

South Korea also enjoys high average broadband speeds of over 40 Mb/sec and the Korean government has set a far more ambitious minimum broadband speed target of 1Gb/sec (gigabit per second) for all homes.

Both South Korea and Japan are busy rolling out fibre to the home (FTTH) fibre optic broadband networks which allow these extremely high download and upload speeds.  The UK fibre-optic network is likely to be fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) which delivers speeds far faster than DSL broadband (over copper wire), but not nearly as fast as those achieved with FTTH.

If you want to compare broadband providers and compare broadband speeds by provider, why not try our unique smartsearch at www.simplifydigital.co.uk or call our experts free on 0800 1 388 388

Written by Charlie

Long standing crime drama ‘The Bill’ is due to exclusively premier in High Definition on Freesat on the 1^st of July.

Having recently celebrated its 25^th year it was probably time for the show to have a makeover and with Freesat been the only place to view HDTV without paying a monthly subscription it’s a great way to watch those police chases close up and in high def!

ITV HD will be screening the iconic police drama as well as England’s upcoming Football Internationals and blockbuster movies.

The Bill has been added to Freesat's HD lineup.

This latest announcement supports Freesat’s approach of consistently adding HD programs to its unique ‘non-subscription’ platform.

As well as ITV HD, Freesat also offer BBC HD which usually has more HD content on offer than ITV HD.

With BBC HD you can currently catch Andy Murray and Co in High Definition at Wimbledon as well as regular weekly shows such Gavin & Stacey and Friday Night with Jonathon Ross.

Freesat claim to offer up to 70 hours a week of HD content between the two channels which isn’t a bad effort when you think of the monthly subscription cost… zero!

High Definition is undeniably the way of the future so it’s up to the platform providers to carry on working with the broadcasters to meet the growing demand.

If you want more information on High Definition or  if you want to compare digital TV from any other provider click here or call one of our resident digital experts on 0800 1388 388.

Written by chris

In case you are looking for any stats on the digital TV market, Ofcom have released their latest quarterly review…  It’s available at http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/tv/reports/dtv/dtu_2009_01/q12009.pdf

There is nothing earth moving, but key headlines are:

·         90% of UK homes now have multi-channel TV on main sets up by 2.4% year-on-year.

·         61% of all secondary TV sets have now also been converted to multichannel TV by the end of Q1, up by around 8% in a year.

·         This still leaves 27% of UK TV sets unable to receive multi-channel TV and continuing to receive analogue terrestrial broadcasts (i.e the 5 terrestrial TV channels).

Other findings in the first quarter of 2009 include:

·         Freeview box sales are falling fast as more people elect to buy IDTVs.  Of the total sales of DTT enabled equipment in Q1, IDTVs accounted for almost 73% of sales in the quarter (2.5 million units), with around 93% of TV sets sold now being digital.

·         Over the past 12 months around 12.7 million DTT units have been sold, compared to around 11.7 million in the previous year, an increase of 8.5%

·          9.8 million homes now rely solely on DTT (digital terrestrial) for digital TV viewing

·         Freesat sales reached about 350,000 units by the end of March, up from 233,000 units in Q4, with about three quarters of Freesat sales HDTV compatible

·         Over 9.4 million receive digital satellite TV services (either pay or free-to-view)

·         Virgin Media reported net additions of almost 30,600 new subscribers, taking its total TV customer base to over 3.65 million of which over 96% is digital cable TV

Written by Charlie

Eurosport has taken up the broadcast rights to Setanta’s US PGA golf for the rest of the 2009 season.  These rights reverted back to the rights holder after the sports digital TV company Setanta fell into administration.

Key events in the package include the PGA Tour play-offs for the FedExCup and The Tour Championship. Setanta had originally paid £105m for the rights.

“We are pleased to announce this agreement with Eurosport which ensures that PGA Tour coverage will continue to be made available, live, every week to golf fans throughout the United Kingdom,” said PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem.
“We are delighted to welcome the US PGA Tour to the Eurosport platform in the UK,” said Eurosport chairman Laurent Eric Le Lay.
Eurosport recently retained the rights to Moto GP and added the rights to British Suprbikes.  It is currently available within Sky’s News and Events Mix and Virgin Media TV.

The Eurosport deal follows ESPN purchasing Setanta’s FAPL rights which consisted of 46 live games in the coming season and 23 games in the three subsequent seasons.

But it is still unclear as to who will buy the other key rights that Setanta owned and that are now up for grabs.  These include the £125m rights for the 60 live Scottish Premier League games each season; and the FA Cup and England international rights for which Setanta paid around £150m.

If you would like help to work out the cheapest way to watch all the sporting action this summer, you can call our experts free who are here to help compare digital TV sports packages to suit every taste, or visit us at www.simplifydigital.co.uk

Written by Charlie

The BBC has announced that high definition TV (HDTV) broadcasts on digital terrestrial television will start in December.

The Freeview HDTV service will launch on a reconfigured version of Freeview multiplex B and will initially include HDTV channels from the BBC, ITV and Channel 4.  Like digital switchover, Freeview HD service will roll out region by region across the UK, starting with the Winter Hill transmitter which serves Manchester and Liverpool.  TV Regions that have already switched to digital will be reconfigured retroactively.

The December date is actually a month after the previously announced November launch for the service.

Graham Plumb of the BBC Operations Group said: “The plan is still to launch Freeview HD on December 2nd at the Winter Hill transmitter serving Manchester and Liverpool. The plan has always been to roll Freeview HD out around the country following switchover and Winter Hill was selected as the first achievable transmitter. There will need to be a retrospective upgrade of regions that have already switched.”

Thumb added that London’s Crystal Palace transmitter will also be upgraded for Freeview HD in the same month.

“The BBC has been working on plans to deliver early upgrades to some stations (serving high populations) that are late in the switchover programme and would otherwise have to wait long for Freeview HD.

“One example is London that switches over in 2012 but we’re planning to upgrade its Crystal Palace transmitter in December this year. There are another four main transmitters that we plan to upgrade in the first half of 2010. We can give the names and dates of these transmitters in a little while when plans are a bit firmer. We are also planning an upgrade to the Digital UK postcode database, which will tell viewers when they can expect their transmitter to be upgraded to Freeview HD.

The December launch gives the consumer electrical trade little time to get a good range of Freeview HD boxes available for customers to take advantage of the Freeview HD broadcasts.  Existing Freeview boxes will need replacing with Freeview HD boxes, which are likely to cost over £150 each.  

We specialise in high definition TV advice, so if you need help to compare high definition TV deals, gives us a call our visit www.simplifydigital.co.uk. 

Written by Charlie

Virgin Media, the digital TV, broadband and home phone provider, has signed a deal with Universal Pictures to add the PictureBox service to its line up. PictureBox is already available via TopUpTV and BT Vision in the UK.

It is a movies-on-demand service which will give Virgin Media customers access to a library of 28 Universal Pictures movies including recent big releases such as Hot Fuzz, The Bourne Ultimatum and The Holiday; and classics like Scarface.  The service will cost Virgin Media subscribers a fixed monthly fee.

 ”Our reach in the UK has now increased more than fivefold and the service has expanded internationally since initial launch less than three years ago,” said Belinda Menendez, president, NBC Universal International TV distribution.

The deal shows Virgin Media’s commitment to continue to broaden their on-demand library, whilst Sky focus their energies on driving high definition TV (HDTV) take up.  For help to compare digital TV and broadband providers, you can call our experts on 0800 1 388 388.

Written by Charlie

The news of Michael Jackson’s death was enough to bring popular entertainment sites to a complete standstill.

His death was confirmed at 3:15pm Los Angeles time but by then there were already thousands of tributes been uploaded to entertainment sites such as TMZ.com and social sites including Twitter.

To put it in perspective there were:

-          Over 50,000 tweets about Michael Jackson’s death in just one hour.

-          23% of all tweets contained the words “Michael Jackson”

-          In total, 30% of all tweets were remarking the pop stars death

-          Michael Jackson is ranked on seven out of the daily top ten Twitter trend topics

-          He is also ranked on four out of the top ten daily Google trend topics

All of this traffic and activity was enough to crash the social and entertainment sites.

The incident further highlights the internet’s ability to rapidly distribute breaking news far quicker than print media. Early editions of many UK newspapers such as The Independent, The Guardian, the Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph and Metro missed publishing the story.

Michael Jackson could always stop the presses.

With that in mind it seems that the majority of people are turning to the web rather than the paper to get the full scope of breaking news.

This also supports Rupert Murdoch’s push to start charging users for access to press publications websites. The reasoning behind his proposal is that online Ad revenues are not corresponding with the amount of traffic the sites are receiving.

Written by chris

Ofcom’s long running review of competition in the UK pay digital TV market took a step forward today with the publication of “a further consultation as part of its pay TV market investigation”.

The consultation sets out details of a proposed ‘wholesale must-offer’ obligation for Sky.  This obligation would require Sky to sell on premium sports and movies content at regulated prices.  The key content includes FAPL football and first-run Hollywood movies.  Ofcom believes that this is required in order to ensure “consumers benefit in the short term from an increased choice of supplier and of platform, and in the longer term from enhanced innovation and investment, especially on non-Sky platforms”.

The report released today states that “Ofcom considers that Sky has market power in the wholesale supply of channels containing this attractive content, and that it is acting on an incentive to limit the distribution of these channels to rival TV platforms.”  Ofcom goes on to say that this is limiting consumer choice in the short term and in the longer term may result in stifling innovation in rival pay TV platforms.

These are very strong statements from Ofcom and ones which Sky will no doubt contest strongly.  Ofcom goes on to say that they do not think the “wholesale must-offer” obligation will adversely affect Sky as they will be able to charge a wholesale rate on which they will make a “fair” margin.

Ofcom revealed that it is also considering whether there is a case for targeted interventions on subscription video-on-demand (SVoD) movie rights and the next FA Premier League auction.

Clearly the process has a lot further to run and this is just another “consultation” released by Ofcom as part of the ongoing market investigation, but it certainly can be taken as a clear statement of intent on behalf of the regulator. 

Written by Charlie