BT Vision - cheap video-on-demand, until you check the costs!

[Bob Crabtree]

BT has at last launched its long-heralded BT Vision video-on-demand service - see BT readies download-to-own and video-on-demand services - and is making great play of its low cost. There are, it says, no monthly charge - unlike, say, Sky, NTL or Telewest - and a digital-terrestrial TV Freeview personal video recorder comes free. In addition, there's replay TV to let you view programmes shown during the previous week.

All content is pay-per-view - well, in BT's own headlines it is - but, like the costs, things are other than they seem. The Freeview PVR - BT calls it the V-box - is said to be able to "instantly stream" pay-per-view content coming in via broadband. But it's only free if you ignore the £60 BT is charging for installation and the further £30 it levies for connection. Self-install is coming some time next year, apparently, though we don't know when.

There's another big gotcha as well. The service is only available to those who with a 2Mb-capable broadband connection who are signed up to BT Total Broadband - and that means paying a monthly subscription. This is either £23 or £27, depending on quite what options you want.

Find our more in this HEXUS.lifestyle.headline and tell us here what you think of this latest scheme to lock you into a phone and broadband service.

[DragonStar]

Lol, thats a joke, option 2 has a 6GB cap... which would last how long? a couple of days maybe?
Edit: i'd say even the 40GB one might be pushing it, especially in a home, with people on the internet at the same time, watching a couple of films a day plus a couple of other of other things..., then theres the monthly cost... is it even competitive with the others?

[DavidM]

And you don't get the snazzy hub if you're already a customer upgrading...

(Unless you pay for it)

[chrestomanci]

Lol, thats a joke, option 2 has a 6GB cap... which would last how long? a couple of days maybe?
Edit: i'd say even the 40GB one might be pushing it, especially in a home, with people on the internet at the same time, watching a couple of films a day plus a couple of other of other things..., then theres the monthly cost... is it even competitive with the others?

Unless BT say outherwise, there is a good chance that the bandwith cap does not apply to video on demand.

ISPs pay for their connection to the internet at large, especialy for connections to the states and other countries. Bandwith between the costomer and the ISP's own servers is almost free, which is why all ISPs run web proxies.

Likewise, anything that the costomer downloads via the video on demand service will be connecting to BT's servers, and that bandwith will cost BT an fraction of what they pay for international connections.

[dave87]

And you don't get the snazzy hub if you're already a customer upgrading...

(Unless you pay for it)

Yea ya do Jus have to moan at them

I moaned rather a lot at them and got sent a home hub - my router was on the blink at the time so I thought why not - still sitting in the packet though, the Belkin one started working again

[GrahamC]

It's an interesting read, complicated but interesting.

Given that there are no real content to prices information it's hard to form an opinion on it's merits. Maybe BT should state more clearly the inbuilt cost required by the broadband and telephone line rental etc but these as of themselves are not detriments to the value of the product seeing as we all need to pay for these from somewhere. BT prices are at the upper end of the market scale but this will change when certain regulated levels of LLU are meet, which is estimated I believe in summer next year around the time most of the pertinent information about the true cost/value of the product in promised.

So in short what we have here ladies and gentlemen IMO is the current annoying tech industry trend ( Hi-Def DVD, PS3 computer graphics cards, chipsets etc) for paper launch.....

[UKMuFFiN]

The setup and connection fee are clearly stated on the site, it's no secret.

The having to switch to their broadband service is what put me off.