PVRs, or personal video recorders, are increasing in popularity rapidly - and are expected to be in 13 million homes by 2010, then 19.9 million homes by 2012, according to a report by Enders Analysis.
There are two sides to the PVR market - the free-to-view PVRs (such as Freeview+) and the pay-for Sky Plus and Sky Plus HD PVRs. Sky currently has 4 million customers with PVRs - and there are a total of 9 million Sky customers, so the potential PVR take-up among them is vast.
The rise in popularity of these personal video recorders, or PVRs, has implications for TV advertising, which is going through a slump anyway - and won’t be helped by over 19 million homes having a device by 2012 that lets them skip the TV adverts altogether. Having said that, there is evidence that the increase in PVRs is actually increasing the amount of TV that people watch.
PVRs allow users to record, pause and rewind live TV - you can often also record more than one programme at a time.
Read more about the increase in PVRs in UK households and its possible effects on the advertising market - in The Telegraph.
Find out more about Sky Plus and Sky Plus HD.
The BBC iPlayer catch up TV service available over the internet is now available on the Nokia N96 mobile phone handset.
The service has been available via the Nokia N96 since 1 October 2008 via two methods: either using a free download from the BBC iPlayer website, or pre-loaded on some Nokia handsets. 
This is the first time BBC iPlayer has been available on a handset to actually download TV programmes - although it is available via the Apple iPhone and iTouch, that is for streaming programmes only.
Any cost may depend on the contract you have with your mobile phone network provider - though Nokia themselves are offering free access to the BBC iPlayer service.
Find out more about the Nokia mobile phone handset N96.
Visit the Nokia mobile phone website.
Read more about iPlayer on Nokia handsets on the BBC News website.
What is BBC iPlayer?
BBC iPlayer is a unique service which lets you watch television on your PC. And it’s legal!
It offers catch up on up to seven days of BBC television programmes and also offers live streaming of popular BBC radio stations and “listen again” capabilities.
The programmes, as usual, contain no advertisements and are “free” to UK license fee payers. They adopt a clever 30 day period - the programme is retained on your computer from when you download it, so that you can watch the episode of Heroes that you missed, whenever you feel like it. You can also share these files with your friends and family, through peer-to-peer technology, though there are guidelines on how you copy or manipulate the files.
BBC iPlayer is available on other platforms as well as online. Virgin TV has iPlayer capabilities as well as the Nintendo Wii and some Nokia phones (Nokia N96). Soon Apple iPhones and Apple Macs will be ready to use the BBC iPlayer system as well.
You can find out more about BBC iPlayer in the BBC iPlayer Help section.
How much does BBC iPlayer cost?
Nothing. BBC iPlayer is free of charge to UK license fee payers.
How do I get BBC iPlayer?
Simple. Hop online and go to BBC iPlayer, from there you can access all of the BBC channels including BBC 1, BBC 2, BBC 3, BBC 4, CBBC, Cbeebies, BBC News and BBC Parliament. And not only TV but radio as well.
If you have Virgin TV, a Nintendo Wii, a Nokia N96 or an Apple Mac or Apple iPhone then you may also be able to access BBC iPlayer and catch up on all of the latest programmes that you didn’t have time to watch.
Free to air digital TV services have been around for a few years now, offering a greatly expanded number of channels without the need for a subscription to TV licence payers up and down the country.
But recently a new free to air TV service called Freesat has been launched by the BBC and ITV.
There are differences between the two free to air services. Essentially the main difference is the way in which the two services are received.
Freeview can be accessed through your existing aerial and requires that you either purchase a Freeview 
decoder box or a TV with built in Freeview capabilities, which can then be plugged into your aerial and instantly receives the service. There are over 50 digital TV and radio channels available on Freeview covering many areas of interest.
Freesat on the other hand requires that you have a working satellite dish or are willing to pay for one to be 
installed on the exterior of your property. You also need to purchase a decoder box, or alternatively buy a TV which comes with a built in decoder. Freesat offers over 140 digital TV and radio channels as well as the opportunity to watch High Definition (HD) content, provided that you buy an HD Freesat decoder box and have an HD ready TV.
Neither service requires a subscription and you just pay for the set up and the equipment.
High Definition, or HD, is the latest in television technology that allows for up to four times more picture detail than Standard Definition or SD broadcasting and visual media offers.
HD content is now accessible over cable and satellite digital TV services, as well as being available to buy in the form of Blu-Ray disks which contain movies and TV shows. Blu-Ray disks work in a similar way to DVDs but with a much higher HD resolution.
The first step to getting HD in your home is to buy an HD-ready TV. These range in size from 15 inches right up to 50 or 60 inch monster screens. The larger the screen, the higher the resolution it will be able to display, and there are several HD resolution standards. However, all of them provide a significant improvement over traditional, SD resolutions. You need a TV that is HD ready in order to properly display an HD broadcast.
Once you have your HD TV you will need to choose one of the several digital television services that broadcast in HD.
Subscription satellite services from Sky are available with HD at an extra cost as the receiver box must be capable of outputting in HD - so you’ll need a Sky Plus HD Box.
The free to air service known as Freesat is now also available as Freesat HD - it requires no subscription, just installation costs and the cost of the receiver box, and then offers many free HD channels as well as all the traditional channels on Freeview in standard definition. You can get a Freesat HD box from retailers including Currys and John Lewis.
Paying for subscription services such as Sky will give you more choice of channels than free to air services but you will have to commit to a contract, so it really depends on how much you’re willing to spend (currently the Sky HD pack costs £10 a month). Find out more about HD from Sky now.
Cable and satellite TV have been battling it out for a dominant market share for years now. Unluckily for them, the key distinctions in their services are becoming harder and harder to make - as TV and media broadcasting technologies continually change and improve, and the viewing habits of the nation change along with them.
Ultimately the key difference still comes down to the way in which the signal gets from the broadcaster to your house.
With satellite TV, as the name suggests, you still need to have a satellite dish installed somewhere on the outside of your property which can send and receive information from the satellite orbiting the earth and allow you to watch the various services on offer.
Satellite TV has recently had an expansion away from the simple subscription based services offered by Sky with the implementation of Freesat, a free to air digital satellite service created by the BBC and ITV.
For both subscription and non subscription satellite services you will still require a dish.
Cable, on the other hand, works via an underground cable connection that delivers all of your content and will sometimes require that you get a cable phone line installed. Unlike satellite you may need to make sure that you are in a cabled area, and though the cable will be more aesthetically discrete it will still require installation and drilling through an exterior wall for the service to be received. Virgin Media are the main providers of cable services in the UK.
Some channels and services are only available on either satellite or cable exclusively, so it’s worth checking to see that the one you go for has the kinds of package you want.
Digital television is the future of television and will soon be the standard way of receiving your television services. It has been available since the end of the 1990s, but has become more mainstream over the last decade. Over the next four years the older analogue broadcasts of television will be phased out across the UK - and by 2012 you will only be able to watch television via digital broadcasts.
The main reasons that broadcasting corporations and the government have been in favour of the digital switch over is the increased functionality, efficiency and flexibility of digital broadcasting as opposed to analogue.
Picture and sound quality are much higher, and interactive TV features can be offered to everyone -helping with advertising, news and information sharing across what was previously a restricted, one way medium.
Also many more channels can be offered on digital TV, giving the viewer much more choice.
The first digital TV was provided via cable or satellite, and required a monthly contract, but offered a huge variety of channels and pay per view events. However, Freeview Digital TV, which is not subscription based, can be received over a traditional TV aerial (though it does require a decoder box or a TV with a built in decoder to work - many digital TVs now include a Freeview decoder). This offers many different channels all for free if you have the right equipment, and has been widely taken up by many households around the country.
The newest kind of free to air, non-subscription based digital television comes in the form of Freesat, which is a digital satellite TV service. It has the advantage of being able to broadcast in high definition (HD), another increasingly popular development in digital TV broadcasting technology.
It might seem that on-demand TV services and catch-up TV offer a similar product, but ultimately the two are different in a couple of subtle but meaningful ways.
On-demand TV is something that can be accessed through a few major digital TV providers’ various packages and also online in the form of software driven internet received content.
On-demand TV, put simply, is a collection of programmes and films that you can either watch for free or purchase for a small fee at any time of the day or night that is convenient for you. It is essentially a convenient replacement for video rental, and each different digital TV company will offer different programmes, such as Virgin Media’s Movie Bank or BT’s Vision package.
Catch-up TV is a service offered by many of the major channels on their websites, giving you access to most of the shows aired over the last 30 days - which again you can watch at any time on your PC or web-enabled device. This is primarily a browser-based streaming facility, like b or ITV’s Catch Up page, and as such the quality is equivalent to most internet streaming resources and slightly worse than on-demand.
However, most catch up TV services put programmes only a click away. While on-demand TV, even when received via an internet connection, will require some kind of registration, log in or monthly contract before any of the content is accessible.
On-demand TV has been brought about by the revolution in broadband and digital TV services and is now available to most people in the UK.
Most of the major broadcasters offer on-demand services, which allow the viewer to watch TV programmes, films and music videos whenever it is convenient for them - either on the internet or over a digital cable or satellite TV service.
The BBC, ITV and Channel 4 now all offer on-demand TV services.
• The BBC has iPlayer, which allows internet users to watch programmes shown within the last 30 days on a number of the BBC’s channels whenever they feel like it, on the internet.
• ITV has its own on demand service, with sport taking centre stage as the jewel of its on-demand crown.
• Channel 4 now has two on-demand services available. On its website you can watch programmes shown within the last 30 days - the system is very similar to BBC’s iPlayer. Channel 4 also has 4OD, a software based on-demand service which can be used to watch many of the programmes from Channel 4, either by streaming them or downloading them for later, which gives much higher playback quality. You can also purchase older shows and even rent movies over 4OD, but it does require that you have a compatible PC and internet connection.
• On both Sky and Virgin Media digital satellite and cable services there are on-demand programming options too.
Sky is the number one service provider of satellite TV in the UK and it offers a range of products and services based on a monthly subscription, all of which are regularly advertised in the media - but it’s easy to become confused between products and wonder what exactly they are offering.
Their two main digital satellite packages are Sky and Sky Plus and there is one significant difference between the two.
Sky is their basic package. It comes with their basic Sky Digibox and offers a range of channels that vary depending on the type of subscription you go for. You can also upgrade your package to include more channels as and when you need them. The basic digibox is nothing more than a decoder of the satellite signal allowing you to view Sky channels on your TV.
Sky Plus is a different service all together. It offers all of the same functionality as the basic Sky Digibox but has the added advantage of being able to pause, rewind and record live TV channels thanks to an internal hard drive - all of which is controllable via your remote control. You can even record a programme on one channel whilst watching an entirely different channel. Additionally you can program it to record an entire season of your favourite show so that you don’t miss an episode.
The Sky Plus service and the Sky Plus box that comes with it is offered at a slightly more expensive initial price than basic Sky but subscription to channels is no more expensive.
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