Sit-up Ltd
From Free net encyclopedia
Template:Lowercase Image:Sit up logo.gif sit-up Ltd (or commonly sit-up) is a UK based broadcaster which launched in 2000.
To over 12 million homes, it delivers a portfolio of shopping and film TV channels. They are ultimately owned by media company NTL, via its Flextech content division - this follows partial ownership prior to May 2005. sit-up runs the channels bid tv and price-drop tv each day from 8am through to 1am the next morning, and speed auction tv from noon to 1am. The downtime is covered by their rolling advertisement arm, Screenshop. The channels are designed to sell consumer products via digital TV (currently carried by digital satellite, cable, and terrestrial) or the Internet.
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Channels
bid tv
Template:Main Image:Bid tv.gif bid tv (known as bid-up.tv until 21 January 2005) is a television channel based in the UK - the first of its kind in the world - it runs live televised auctions every day through various digital television platforms
The channel was launched by its parent company, sit-up Ltd, in October 2000. It started by broadcasting 12 hours a day, many of which were pre-recorded, with auction graphics overlaid so people could bid although the video itself was pre-recorded. It later extended its hours to 18hrs a day (8am - 1am every day) and is now completely live.
price-drop tv
Template:Main Image:Price-drop.gif price-drop tv (which dropped the dot from its name price-drop.tv on 21 January 2005) is a shopping channel that is focused on falling prices, using a form of uniform-price Dutch auction.
It began broadcasting on 11 June 2003, with broadcasting hours of 4pm - midnight, Wednesday to Saturday. This was later extended to 8am-1am 7 days a week. It is available to more than 12 million homes in the UK, and is achieving weekly revenue of over £3 million.
speed auction tv
Template:Main Image:Speed auction.gif speed auction tv was launched on the 27 July 2005, and features rising price auctions lasting about 4 minutes.
The channel runs from 12pm-1am every day and is only live between 4pm and 8pm and then from 9pm until midnight on Wednesday through to Saturday.
matinee movies and bad movies
Image:Bad matinee movies.gif These channels ran on Sky Digital. Their original titles were matinee movies on channel 336 from 9am-9pm, and bad movies on channel 339 from 9pm-9am. matinee movies was a channel with family-orientated films, and rare films such as Love in Pawn or the Frankie Howerd bequest comedy A Touch of the Sun. bad movies played a variety of cinematic "turkeys", but evidently, some of the content was from matinee movies, especially after 5am. The last hour of matinee movies and the first three of bad movies were occupied by some of sit-up's shopping auctions, such as speed auction tv. Breaks between films were regularly filled by these channels. Films on the channels were introduced by film critic Paul Ross. As an interlude, or at the start of the broadcast day, there were showings of a film magazine programme called Sprockets (not to be confused with the SNL sketches with Mike Myers).
Both channels have recently been sold to Dolphin Television, which renamed them Movies4Men and ActionMax respectively as of February 1 2006. They are intended to begin broadcasting 24 hours a day, although their initial schedule follows the same hours as their predecessors but with less auction programming. As the titles of the stations show, they have changed their content when you compare the previous content of matinee and bad movies, but several films from the former channels pop up from time to time. This is because archives needed to be replaced, and the stations had to make do with the films in them until later on.
Technical issues
Many of the films shown on matinee movies and bad movies were taken from inferior copies with poor sound and/or picture quality. In addition, they were almost invariably screened at the wrong aspect ratio, being squashed vertically (or stretched horizontally) into 16:9 letterbox format from 4:3 originals. This is common of many satellite/freeview channels/programs, especially quizzes and games.
Movies4Men retained the letterboxed format and distorted pictures. ActionMax dropped letterboxing in most cases and removed the picture distortion. As of March 2006 neither channel has shown any noticeable improvement in picture quality.
Screenshop
Image:Screenshop.gif Screenshop is an infomercial-based shopping channel. It broadcasts 24 hours a day on the Sky Digital platform, and during the hours of 1am-8am every day during sit-up's downtime on its other channels. A deal in July 2004 meant that Vector Direct will now broadcast their presentations exclusively on the channel.
