Tag Archives: active digital

Telewest launch EPG (1999)

Telewest active digital

Telewest launched it’s Active Digital TV service in 1999 and was built on the same foundation that Cable & Wireless used for their digital TV service.

These screenshots were originally hosted on Digitalspy and were captured by a forum member, but the links to them were broken in an update, and were no longer directly accessible. From the looks of it they were captured using the RF output, so they are not indicative of the quality available at the time.

Startup Screen

Telewest 1999

Now & Next bar, very similar in practice to Sky Digital

Telewest 1999

The main home screen

At-A-Glance

Telewest 1999

The main TV Guide, called ‘At-A-Glance’, this shows TV listings for the next three days

Telewest 1999

Pressing i calls up a description of the program

TV-On-Demand

Telewest 1999

This isn’t true video on demand, at this point only NVOD was supported. the customer selects a convenient time slot showing to view the movie or event

Telewest 1999

Different categories

Programs-By-Subject

Telewest 1999

This I imagine is similar to the A-Z listings on Sky, where you can view programmes by their genre. Useful for discovering new or similar programs.

Settings

Telewest 1999

Main settings area

Telewest 1999

You can set the reminder notification warning before the program starts. Its worth noting that cable had implemented this before Sky Digital,

Telewest 1999

Here you can change from RGB to Composite, and set the box to output widescreen or standard. Letterbox options are also available.

Telewest 1999

Telewest 1999

Interactive

The early implementation of interactive was done in a separate Liberate browser, that had to be loaded separately. this meant that red button functionality was not yet possible in this build, since the Liberate environment was not yet running full time.

The main interactive menu, very similar to the ntl interactive portal

List of all entertainment interactive services, which are customised websites that are designed for use on an embedded set-top-box.

Interactive is delivered using the internal broadband cable modem built into the set top box, a phoneline is not required and the service is always on

Nearly all of the content and service are built using HTML3, which makes it easy to develop and host service, although there are some differences and restrictions comparted to a desktop class website.

A navigation bar can be used to browse around the service, and to exit back to the tv channel you were watching

An email service was built into the service, and was tied into the blueyonder email service.

Vs Cable & Wireless