back to article New CEO to Tiscali TV: 'Show me the money'

The new owner of Tiscali, Carphone Warehouse CEO Charles Dunstone, has told the Financial Times that he's prepared to give Tiscali TV a chance to demonstrate that its video-on-demand service can make money for the company. The news comes as a relief to those working in Tiscali TV, as Mr. Dunstone has been pretty dismissive of …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hmmmmmm,

    ", but while the service was technically competent, the company suffered from legendarily-poor customer service and couldn't last."

    This actually sounds like TalkTalk's business policy.

    So, why is TalkTalk so dismissive of it. Sticking the finger up to your customers seems to have worked for them so far.

    Perhaps the next merger will be with Ryanair, who knows?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Legendarily poor

    "Homechoice was the UK's first video-on-demand service, but while the service was technically competent, the company suffered from legendarily-poor customer service and couldn't last".

    And being owned by Tiscali was supposed to improve this...? LMAO

    'Mine's the one with all the P45s in the pocket'.

  3. Andy Barber
    Boffin

    Homechoice

    When Homechoice first started, I'd just moved to frames in BT. The take up was staggering slow, about ONE customer a WEEK. The words "hole" & "plug" sprung to mind, whenever I connected a Homechoice customer.

    Now BT Vision, that's a different story. BT's System X/Y* were designed to deliver TV but Margaret Thatcher thought that allowing US Cable Companies to dig up our streets was a better idea, than using the existing infrastructure.

    * Thirty years old & now obsolescent!

  4. John P
    Paris Hilton

    I hope

    they don't pull the plug on Tiscali TV. While there is a small amount of lag between changing channels (3 seconds at most) and it does use up a reasonable chunk of my net bandwidth, I have found Tiscali TV to be a very good product. Accessing on-demand programmes is easy and on most occasions, you can get a show on catchup tv within 10 minutes of it finishing on the main channel.

    I have found it to be ideal when I forget a show is on or want to catch some episodes of something i've never seen before.

    Plus the deal I got means the TV plus phone only costs me an extra £2 a month over what I was paying for just Tiscali broadband, saving me paying BT line rental and Sky.

    hmmm... maybe its deals like that that are the reason it isn't making any money!

    Paris...I'm sure there's a Paris angle there somewhere.

  5. Sir Sham Cad

    Here we go again.

    I was a happy Homechoice customer and never had a problem with the CS. The problems I had, as can be seen from many a rant on the El Reg commentard paradise, were down to the utterly baffling design of the STB.

    I've also not suffered from bad CS from Tiscali, when they had to replace the latest fried Homechoice box. They came out the next day.

    Personally, I enjoy Tiscali TV. It has, for my tastes, better packages than VM or Sky. Given that I rent and can't stick a dish up, or that there's no aerial on the roof, my telly has to come down a telecoms pipe, be it cable or BT line. I use the on demand services quite a lot (mostly National Geographic) and I think it's a great product. I've no cpmplaints about my broadband, either. I'm often speedtesting at 6Mbps on my "up to 8Mb" line which, considering I'm running 15 metres of extension cable from socket to STB, ain't bad.

    So, I say to Mr Dunstone (who doesn't read El Reg and doesn't care what I think because he's too busy bathing in money) the Tiscali TV service is unique, it has a place in the market so please, please, don't kill it.

  6. Dave Bell

    Bandwidth?

    It costs 2 quid a month?

    This hits an ISP network just as iPlayer does. Is that really enough to pay for the necessary assurance of network capacity?

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