The DigiTV supports various platforms, find out more detail...

• The interactive services sit behind the Sky broadcasting and are accessed by pushing the interactive button or pressing ‘red’ from a host of programmes on a variety of channels
• 99% of the country can receive Sky programming/services as Sky is transmitted/delivered by a satellite, which means that geographic issues do not hamper its reach
• Some of the screens in Sky are delivered in ‘broadcast’, this is an expensive way of delivering services for the business, these pages can only be static information/menus, no interaction or localisation can occur within these pages
• All of the Local Authority content is delivered once the customer has ‘dialled up’; any local information, interactive offerings or ‘intelligence’ needs to be in dial up so as to pull all relelvant content from our servers in real time. Howver DigiTV covers the cost of this charge and all citizens access Looking Local via a freephone connection and there is a new breed of broadband boxes now available
• Dial up utilises a phone connection, similar to the web, an internal modem creates a connection with Sky and allows the interchange of content between the user/citizen and the Local Authority.
• Every Sky user has the ability to configure up to five email accounts through their Sky subscription (although we have found it is often worth telling/reminding users of this and putting a page on your service to tell them how to)
• The number of dial up pages is limited only by the Starter Kit infrastructure. No limitations are placed on LAs regarding the quantity of content that they wish to deliver to users on their site.
• While accessing Local Authority microsites, the citizen/viewer cannot see the television programme
• Following two minutes of inactivity the service will automatically disconnect
• ‘Looking Local’ is the customer facing brand of DigiTV, all Local Government services are found under Looking Local on the Sky Active menu and/or via DirectGov in the Sky Interactive menu
• To access the services on Sky please see Looking Local Pathways

• The interactive services sit behind the Virgin broadcasting and are accessed by pushing the interactive button

• The Starter Kit supports Freeview boxes that have broadband connections or modems (e.g. Netgem, Pace….) There are a range of boxes with broadband capabilities now on the market and these are set to increase
• Other Freeview boxes have no back channel and therefore they are not truly ‘interactive’
• Without the interactivity only flat information-only pages can be published, which whilst useful, would not achieve as many benefits and savings as e-Government is attempting to create
• Publishing on Freeview is limited as the bandwidth is fixed, this means that a finite amount of information can be published and therefore services could not expand and change as bandwidth restrictions would limit development

• Local Authority sites on DigiTV’s Looking Local service can be accessed via any Internet browsable mobile phones
• The operator 3 mobile has placed an icon within its menu which allows direct access to ‘Looking Local’, which leads to all the partner sites. The 3 mobile network covers 88% of the population and has 3.2 million customers
• We are in discussions with mobile operators to follow suit
• There are new options available to undertake mobile SMS marketing, for more information contact us