ITV Box Office on Sky – not the best of starts for a new service

The launch night of ITV’s new pay-per-view service, ITV Box Office, did not go as well as planned.

Set up for Pay Per View boxing, and the Eubank Jr v Quinlan fight, some Sky viewers who had paid for the channel were left with a blue screen.

Sky Help Team tweeted “ITV Box Office Boxing – We are currently investigating a Blue Screen/Frozen Banner issue on the channel. More updates to follow.”

But there does seem to be an issue somewhere between Sky and ITV Box Office, as after registering on the ITV Box Office website, ITV had warned viewers registering on Saturday for the night’s boxing they might have to wait up to four hours for the channel to be cleared on their viewing card. To encourage early reservations, a £3 discount to watch the night’s boxing had been available, but latecomers were charged the full £12.95.

Social media has been inundated with complains to ITV Box Office, and the fact that people had paid for the fight, but did not see any of it.

On Sunday morning the Sky Help Team tweeted “Update: ITV Box Office Boxing. Customers who purchased the ITV Boxing via their Sky Box will not be charged. Sorry for any inconvenience”

ITV Box Office is ITV’s first HD-only channel, distributed on Sky, Virgin Media (TiVo only) and online. Content rights management applies to the channel, meaning the recording function on Sky boxes is restricted – viewers who tried to set their Sky boxes to record the event prior to this evening found they couldn’t. As the channel is available in HD only, it is not available on “cardsharing” systems.

ITV Box Office can be found on the Astra 2 satellites on the following frequency.

Frequency 11068
Polarization V
Symbol Rate 23000
FEC 3/4