Ordinary Gweilo

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BBC Entertainment

As of yesterday, BBC Prime on Now Broadband TV became BBC Entertainment. However, as I expected, it appears that this is mainly a re-branding exercise, with a few minor changes to the schedule – though it’s hard to tell because although there is a bbcentertainment.com website, it redirects to bbcprime.com and if you select Hong Kong nothing happens.

One of the "new" programs is Footballers’ Wives, which I’ve never seen, but it is apparently so trashy that it’s quite funny. The odd thing is that it was made for ITV in the UK (but it’s also on BBC America so I suppose they must have the international rights). Two things – firstly, it’s not really "new", it’s nearly 5 years old (and has recently been cancelled), and secondly I’m not sure I see the point if it is subject to the same heavy-handed censorship they had on BBC Prime.

The other problem I have with Now Broadband TV is that you can’t set a timer to record programmes (as you can with Cable TV). They did announce back in January that they were going to provide a ‘Video On Demand’ service, and it got mentioned in Business Week (This Is The Face Of Broadband TV) but it doesn’t seem to have got beyond the trial, which only includes 4 Chinese language channels. Anyway, the DVD for the first two series of Footballers Wives is only £15.00 from Amazon, so why bother trying to record it? 

One thing that is clear is that I have missed my chance to watch Eastenders. BBC Prime introduced it in January and now it is gone without me watching even a single episode.

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4 responses to “BBC Entertainment”

  1. Victor Meldrew avatar
    Victor Meldrew

    I have just had an exchange of EMails with BBC ‘Entertainment’ taking them to task over the fact that all of the programs which i signed up to BBC Prime to see are no longer provided. Not only have they cancelled Eastenders but it seems Top Gear is gone too. Basically , they don’t give a toss for their subscribers. Apparently they want to ‘appeal to Asians’.
    However, regarding the recording thing. I have been recording stuff from NOW broadband for over a year with no problem, other than having to leave the box on the right channel and not being able to watch anything else whilst it’s on. Oh and of course if you leave the box on too long the soundtrack gets out of sync. Ah , and then there’s the matter of their abysmal time keeping (like all the HK stations) .

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  2. Chris avatar
    Chris

    My guess is that Top Gear will turn up on one of their other channels (BBC Knowledge or BBC Lifestyle) before too long. That’ll be extra, though, I expect.
    Yes, I can record stuff on Now Broadband TV, but the problem is setting the channel. If I try to do this in advance there’s the strong possibility that I’ll end up recording whatever is on the Disney Channel instead. Also, in the unlikely event that I wanted to record something on the BBC followed by something on Star, I can’t do that unless I manually change the channel.
    Cable TV may be rubbish in many ways, but they do have a very easy method for setting a timer for any program in their schedule.

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  3. Christiaan avatar
    Christiaan

    Does anyone know if Top Gear is on Now Broadband ?
    and what channel ?

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  4. joanna avatar
    joanna

    i see that i’m not the only one, I also no longer have bbc prime which entailes lack of my dearest eastenders, and i haven’t seen what happened to stacy, if steven did anything to her ;( all I’m left with is the homepage but it’s not the same. “a great gift of christmas ” from my cable tv….. ;(

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