That's right - was ONDigital exclusive for 2-3 years, partly I guess to give ONDigital a supposed advantage and also I guess due to the cost of getting all the regions on to the platform as well.
To be fair, the BBC faced the same cost issue of getting all their English Regions on to DSat, which didn't happen until 28 January 2002, although they did at least broadcast the network version of BBC One.
The BBC dropped encryption (NDS/Sky Videoguard) and (allegedly) with the savings were able to rent enough extra transponder space (on the new narrow beam Astra 2D (that ITV were also using)) for most of the BBC 1 regions. They were a little quieter regarding the extra
EPG fees to regionalise and postcode map BBC 1 [1] and have all the out of area variants on 9xx. So the net result may well have been the same overall expense, or possibly more (it's never been clear how some rights holders assessed the BBC going unencrypted, and whether extra costs were levied there)
[1] I remember also, initially ITV's regional postcode database was used by Sky (for the BBC), so places such as Oxford ended up with BBC 1 W Midlands on Ch 101. Happy days !
Last edited by Markymark on 21 December 2016 11:37am
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