Bloody Top-Up confusing things. Out-of-date hardware which Teletext on 4 won't work on, is now required to get C4's other channel, E4. Are C4 sending out confused messages or what? Not to mention the service hasn't even started yet and already people are confusing Freeview with Top-Up, and thinking that you now need to pay to receive Freeview.
The Freview consortium runs the following multiplexes: 1,B,C,D (
channels)
They market
all the FTA channels on DTT and call this service "Freeview" (even though some of the channels are nothing to do with them), which was fine when all the channels were free, and by rights they should have all remained free.
However, Top-Up TV (which is run by two people who wanted to run a
subscription service on DTT back when ITV Digital collapsed, and have cropped up in the press every so often reminding people that they still want to do this), have now caused confusion. As they can't put subscription services on any of the Freeview muxes, they are launching on muxes 2,A.
Why it shouldn't happen or will fail:Muxes 2,A have had some power increases since ITV Digital closed but still run "64QAM" so suffer from break-up.
Top-Up TV have taken the majority of available space away from existing and potential FTA channels (TV Travel Shop has closed, Setanta's proposed sports channel has been axed, TCM/Boomerang were going to launch initially as FTA and haven't; some or all of these have been caused by Top-Up
before they have even launched), there is also the danger of existing free channels going subscription or being replaced with subscription services (although this would be limited to mux 2,A
channels except ITV, C4, Five, S4C, so would not be major)
They are using old decoders which you can't buy anymore (except on eBay etc), are slow, unsupported and often have problems with MHEG (text services), whereas the majority of boxes sold in the last two years have been new, fast, supported boxes which cannot get Top-Up anyway.
The service is limited to just four or five channels on air at any one time (they may advertise eleven, but they time-share).
Most people who were subscribers to ITV Digital have moved to satellite or cable. Of the remaining people that didn't, it is unlikely that the amount that would want to subscribe (after getting their fingers burnt last time) would be enough to sustain the service.
It undoes all the work Freeview have done in deassociating "digital" with "pay".
The confusion will most likely slow down the uptake of DTT, which will put back analogue switch-off (which is the reason for digital TV in the first place)
I give it six months to a year tops.
Chris