Britbox UK - UK SVoD Platform.

An oddity of them being written and performed, and indeed a lot of the filler footage being produced in 1964, but finally realised in 2019-20!

One neat touch is the use of the "Trapped In The Sky"-specific version of the theme music and closing music for the "pilot" episode of the Anniversary set.

I don't remember much discussion here about the episodes themselves but they are astonishingly superb and faithful.

I see a BritBox barker channel has popped up on BT TV, notably promoting the 6 months free with BT offer.

I appreciate that everyone might not be applicable for the offer, but I have managed to get BritBox free for 6 months with BT, after my 6 months free with EE expired, using the same account. I believe you don’t need to be a BT TV customer to take the offer, I believe BT Broadband customers are eligible for this too.

Here’s the list for November’s additions to BritBox, including an increase to the number of Film4 movies, Coronation Street at 60, and quite remarkably, First Tuesday. Good to see that ITV are really putting part of their archive onto the platform that otherwise wouldn’t be seen elsewhere.

https://www.itv.com/presscentre/britbox/press-releases/britbox-november-2020-highlights

I note the Britbox standard trial is now only 7 days.

After going into Developer Options on the Firestick, I've been able to see the resolution of some of the shows on Britbox.

Spitting Image is 1920x1080/25fps.
Desmonds is 1024x576/25fps.
Close My Eyes (Film 4) is 1920x1080/25fps.

That makes sense if they are ingesting at the original resolution in square pixels (with 4:3 stuff pillar boxed).

It's a pity Desmonds is 25fps rather than 50fps - are BritBox still not doing interlaced content at full frame rate? (ITV Hub does 50fps now -and BritBox UK is handled by the ITV Hub team)

I have noticed all the TV adverts for BritBox show the clips of 50i content properly though, so maybe there's hope for it some day.

They desperately need to retire that New Order song from their ads. It's been over a year now and it is playing before every YouTube video I'm watching, it's driving me mad. I don't know why they're so keen to push the Inbetweeners Movie which is the ad I see the most regularly, All4 have constantly advertised it being free to watch on there and anyone who wants to see it will have seen it multiple times by now. Really it only highlights how poor their younger skewing selection is.

It’s worse when the unskippable BritBox advert, actually appears on BritBox prior to the programme. This was certainly the case with a couple of Spitting Image episodes of late.

Agree about the advertising though, it’s time to give New Order and The Inbetweeners Movie a rest in promotions. BritBox has quite a niche but isn’t playing on that strength.

I feel like if viewers haven't already subscribed to this service with the current set of adverts during two national lockdowns where streaming service use went through the roof then why would they be motivated by the New Order adverts now? Surely it's time for a refreshed campaign.

Yes I thought this was odd. I did a 7 day trial to watch Spitting Image and I assume they only played this trial before this show because it's an original but it did seem unnecessary. Presumably it was to push people like me who were just doing the trial to see what else the service had available.

Also I thought the movie section was awful. It felt more like a BFI Player selection than on a mainstream streamer but appreciate they don't really have a huge history of filmmaking beyond Film4.

I think films from BBC Film would bolster the film selection but I suspect there is contracts with studios where that might not be possible.