Abacat's What If's/Chorus

## Chorus

### Products

Equipment to receive free-to-air digital terrestrial and satellite television channels

### Owner

BBC
BSB (Granada/C4/M7 Group)
Multicable

### Website

chorus.co.uk

**Chorus** is the British Republic's main digital terrestrial, free-to-air digital satellite, and IPTV television platform. It is operated the BBC, British Satellite Broadcasting (backed by ITV franchisee Granada Television, Channel 4 and Canal+ owned M7 Group) and cable operator Multicable. It was launched on 5 November 1997, taking the licence for digital terrestrial television in the country.

The service provides consumer access via an aerial to the eleven DTT multiplexes covering the British Republic. The service makes use of the capacity available with the AVC (H.264) encoding system to offer a selection of 60 (as of April 2023) high-definition channels.

## History

On 18 September 1995, British Satellite Broadcasting, the BBC and Multicable together created British Digital Broadcasting (BDB) as a joint venture, and applied to operate five digital terrestrial television (DTT) licences. They faced competition from a rival, Digital Television Network (DTN), a company created by cable operator CableTel (later known as NTL). On 15 April 1996, BDB won the auction and the Independent Television Commission (ITC) awarded the sole broadcast licence for DTT to the consortium. Then on 20 December 1996, the ITC awarded three pay-TV digital multiplex licences to BDB.

Eight multiplexes were set up, with three of them allocated to the existing analogue broadcasters. The other three multiplexes were auctioned off. Chorus was given one year from the award of the licence to launch the first DTT service. In addition to launching audio and video services, it also led the specification of an industry-wide advanced interactive engine, based on MHEG-5. This was an open standard that was used by all broadcasters on DTT.

Chorus officially launched on 30 October 1997 at 5 am, when the BBC, British Satellite Broadcasting and Multicable officially began the digital terrestrial television (DTT) licences to broadcast on the eight multiplexes. The service initially launched with BBC One, BBC Two, ITV, Channel 4 & ITV2. The BBC launched a slew of new channels for the service which were broadcast on four of the seven slots on the BBC's Multiplex A, including:

* youth-oriented BBC Three and it's daytime (06.00 - 19.00) strand BBC Playbox;
* arts & cultural service BBC Four and it's daytime (07.00 - 20.00) strand CBBC Digital;
* BBC News 24 - the 24 hour news channel that had existed on cable & BSB since 1991;
* and a dedicated channel to sports coverage, BBC Sport.

Other free-to-air services included BSB's news channel Now, music channel Powerhouse and Granada Plus/Men & Motors which all switched to free-to-air status whilst Channel 4 launched More4 free-to-air which was aimed at an older audience than the main channel. Other free-to-air services included the ITN News Channel, music channel The Hits and The Sports Channel News. There was also ITV Guide, a channel which featured rolling programme information for the ITV network.

There was a basic subscription package priced at £5.99 which included 12 channels: Galaxy, E4, Sky One, Fox Kids/Sky Two, Thames Food Network/Thames Select, UK Gold, The Comedy Channel, Bravo/Trouble, Living/Challenge TV, Thames World/Thames Kids, TNT/Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon/MTV. There was also premium options available which carried Sky Movies and Sky Movies 2, The Movie Channel, The Disney Channel, Channel 4's newly launched arthouse cinema channel FilmFour, Sky Sports, Sky Sports 2, The Sports Channel and The Sports Channel 2. The Disney Channel and FilmFour were offered free alongside The Movie Channel and The Sports Channel.

## Channels

*See also: Abacat's What If's/Chorus/Channel list*