Moses not Macca on BBCi

THE UK MARKET is unusual in offering both terrestrial and cable based digital TV. So it acts as something of a testbed. And the Glastonbury music festival gave viewers a unique chance to try out the BBC's new interactive service - BBCi.

The objective of the exercise is to provide viewers with the chance to watch an alternative to the headlining band on the main stage - just like Glastonbury itself. All you have to do is push the red 'interactive' button. But it's not that easy.

As part of the Glastonbury coverage was playing on the 'free-to-air' BBC Three channel, it seemed logical to select that particular channel on the INQ's NTL supplied Pace set-top box. Doing so resulted in an error message telling the viewer to go to BBC1 or BBC2. So we tried BBC2 which was showing Glastonbury at the time and nothing happened. BBC1 was half way through showing a feature film - Uncommon Valor. But we pressed the red button anyway (you have to hold it down for a few seconds.)

Imagine our surprise when up came BBCi's coverage of Glastonbury which featured a band called Moses as opposed to the standard BBC offering which was featuring Sir Paul McCartney (Macca) droning on about a band on the run.

We're proud of our victory against all odds but this is the complete opposite to a user friendly interface. Incidentally there was no clue as to how to escape from the BBCi screen, once you've selected it. Pressing every key at random seemed to indicate that the zero button gets you out.

One wonders just who else managed to watch BBCi if it was this difficult? µ