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Top Up TV / Top Up TV Anytime

This page provides information on Top Up TV... a service that offers extra pay-to-view channels as well as the existing Freeview channel lineup

What is Top Up TV?

Top Up TV launched in March 2004, offering 10 channels not available on Freeview, on a subscription basis. These channels included UK Style, Eurosport, UKTV Gold, TCM, Discovery, Cartoon Network, UK Food, Bloomberg, Toonami and Boomerang.

At the end of 2006, Top Up TV began scaling down the broadcast of these live channels, moving to a new service called Top Up TV Anytime

The original, basic, Top Up TV service

The original Top Up TV package (£7.99 for 11 channels) is no longer available - it's been phased out as Top Up TV moves over to its Anytime service. Customers that haven't moved to Anytime are still getting a reduced live TV service, but this now only offers a small amount of content. As of August 2007, live channels broadcast on Top Up TV are as follows:

Channel 17 - UKTV Gold (5pm - 11:30pm)
Channel 26 - UKTV Style (1pm - 4pm)
Channel 33 - Eurosport UK (7.30am - 10:30am)

The basic service is no longer available for new customers - the main offering is now Top Up TV Anytime.

What is Top Up TV Anytime?

Top Up TV Anytime officially launched in November 2006, and is a hard-disk based solution that uses a special set-top box to record a selection of TV programmes from TopUp's lineup of channels. Programmes are recorded onto the box's built-in hard-disk during the off-peak hours, so that you can watch them the next day - offering a selection of TV content that can be watched at your convenience.

TopUp TV Anytime Box

Content is available from the following channels: UKTV Gold, Paramount Comedy, Hallmark Channel, Living TV, Discovery Factual, Discovery Lifestyle, MTV, TCM, Discovery Animal Planet, Life & Times, UKTV Food, UKTV Style, Boomerang, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, CN Too and Disney Channel.

To get the new 'Anytime' service, you'll need to buy a special TopUp TV Anytime set-top box. This costs £89.99, and can be ordered online from Empire Direct, Argos and Amazon. A version with a larger hard-disk (250Gig) is available for £129.99 from Argos online.

The monthly subscription is £9.99 a month.

More details, plus a review, on our Top Up TV Anytime page

We featured Top Up TV Anytime in Show 10 of our online radio show.
Listen to the show online, or download it to your MP3 player.
Listen to Show 10 | Latest Show | More Info

How do I get Top Up TV?

To subscribe to Top Up TV, you need to be in a Freeview coverage area - Your Freeview set-top box or digital TV set must be capable of receiving Freeview Channel 5 ("Five"), which is on the same set of channels as the TopUp TV service - See our Reception page for help getting Freeview channels.

'Anytime' subscription: Costs £9.99 a month, by direct debit. With Top UP TV Anytime, you get access to all of the Freeview channels, plus up to 100 hours of TV content downloaded to the special 'Anytime' box overnight for viewing on-demand. This service only works with the new Top Up TV Anytime box. The Top Up TV+ box can hold up to 120 hours of TV, allows you to pause live Freeview TV and has a 14 day programme guide. The price for the box is as follows:

New and Existing TopUp customers: Top Up TV Anytime costs £89.99 - the box can be ordered online from Empire Direct, Argos and Amazon.

What set-top box do I need?

Until 2007, it was possible to get up to 11 extra TV channels with Top Up TV using a Freeview box with a card slot, or a TV that could accept a subscription card. In 2007, Top Up TV phased out this service, replacing it with "Top Up TV Anytime". Here's how to get the service:

The Anytime box: Top Up TV Anytime offers the Freeview TV and radio channels, a small amount of extra live programming (UK Gold, UK Style and a few hours of Eurosport), plus up to 100 hours of extra content that can be viewed on demand. Priced £99.99 to new customers. More info

The Top Up TV+ box

The Top Up TV Anytime set-top box is the Thomson DTI 6300-16 receiver, which has a twin-tuner and a 160 gig hard-drive (for 120 hours of TV - around 90 hours of which is made up of TopUp content downloaded over a week).

As well as being able to receive the Freeview TV and radio channels, this new box downloads TopUp TV content during off-peak hours, and the Top Up TV programmes can be watched the next day. The TopUp TV Anytime set-top boxes became available in early December 2006 and are now priced £89.99 including connection and first month's rental. Anytime boxes can be ordered online from Empire Direct, Argos and Amazon.

Topup TV box - Thomson DTI-6300

See our review of the Thomson DTI-6300 for more on this box, and the Top Up TV Anytime service.
We also featured Top Up TV Anytime in Show 10 of our podcast.

Common Questions

What is Top Up TV?	In February 2004, the head of Freeview, Matthew Seaman, left to form a new enterprise, Top Up TV. The aim of this company was to add new channels to the existing free channels available on Freeview. A number of extra channels became available on a subscription-basis, on the 31st of March 2004. The TUTV service relaunched as TopUp TV Anytime in September 2006.
What is Top Up TV Anytime?	From December 2006, TopUpTV started offering something called Top Up TV Anytime - This service involves buying a special box that records TopUp TV channels overnight to be watched on the next day. The box costs £99.99 including connection and one months viewing, and the subscription is £9.99 a month. See our TUTV Anytime page.
How do I subscribe?	To sign up to Top Up TV, and to get a subscription card, you need to pay for a Top Up TV subscription on a monthly basis in advance with a Visa or Mastercard credit card, or by Direct Debit. The price for the Top Up TV Anytime service is £9.99 a month. You'll need the 'Anytime' set-top box , which became available in December 2006. These are available from Empire Direct, Argos and Amazon.
Getting a card	This question looks at what to do if you have a Freeview box that has a card slot, and you're looking for a Top Up TV subscription card to get extra channels. In January 2007, Top Up TV decided to stop selling their subscription cards, mainly because the amount of live content offered by Top Up TV had been drastically reduced from 11 channels to just three. Instead, Top Up TV are now selling their Top Up TV Anytime service. So - you can't buy new subscription cards, and if you're looking to get Top Up TV, you'll need to go for Top Up TV Anytime. Alternatively - you could consider one of the other digital TV services offering extra channels, such as BT Vision, Sky, or Virgin.
Switching to Anytime	If you were a customer of Top Up TV before September 2006, you can switch to Top Up TV Anytime online at www.topuptv.com, or by phoning TUTV on 08700 543210. You'll need to buy an 'Anytime' set-top box
How do I contact Top-up TV?	If you're looking to get in touch with Top Up TV, here are the contact details we have: Web: www.topuptv.com Phone (Subscription enquiries): 08700 543210 Phone (Customer services): 08712 712 712 (10p a minute). Top Up TV's email address is: enquiries@topuptv.com Top Up TV's postal address is: Top Up TV, P O Box 801, Kirkcaldy, Fife, KY2 6WW If you wish to make a formal complaint, it seems the advice is to contact Top Up TV's registered Head Office: Address: Top Up TV Ltd, Riverview House, 20 Old Bridge Road, Hampton Wick, Kingston-Upon-Thames, Surrey, KT1 4BU The Head Office phone number is 0208 977 6097 - note that customer services queries cannot* be handled on this number, and you are advised to use the number listed above.* Say no to 0870 reports that you may be able to get through by calling 01592 587200 and being transferred to Customer Services.
How do I cancel?	You can cancel your Top Up TV subscription at any time if you wish to stop receiving the TopUp TV channels. To do this, phone TopUp TV As an alternative to TopUp TV, you may want to consider some of the other digital TV options: Sky - Delivered by satellite, this offers the widest choice of channels - you have to subscribe to get the more popular channels. More on our Sky page. There's also a free-to-view satellite service. Cable TV - Decent choice of channels on subscription if you're in a cable area. Virgin Media's offering free digital TV if you use them for home phone) BT Vision - A home TV service that launched in 2007. BT Vision offers the main Freeview channels plus a library of TV shows, movies and sporting events downloaded over BT Broadband.
Freeview if you cancel 'Anytime'?	Answer moved our our Top UP TV Anytime FAQ
My set-top box or TV doesn't have a card slot	Top Up TV no longer sell basic subscription cards for set-top boxes or IDTV sets. Instead, they're now only selling their Top Up TV Anytime boxes, which support all of the TUTV services.
Top-up TV on an IDTV?	For those people with an IDTV (a TV set with a built-in Digital TV receiver), it used to be possible to receive the TopUp TV channels. To do this, you needed to plug a CAM (Card reader), into a CI slot in your telly. As we outline elsewhere on this page, Top Up TV no longer sell subscription cards, as they're now selling Top Up TV Anytime, which makes use of a special set-top box. To get the Top Up TV service, you need to buy a Top Up TV Anytime box, which can be plugged into your TV set using a SCART lead.
What is a CAM?	CAM stands for Conditional Access Module. Some set-top boxes have a CAM slot, which means that you can plug a CAM adapter into this slot, and plug a TopUp TV subscription card into the CAM adapter slot. Note that as of January 2007, Top Up TV has stopped selling their non-Anytime service, so even if you get a CAM, you can't buy a Top UP TV subscription card. However, if you're looking to get Setanta Sports over Freeview on a suitable TV or set-top box, you'll need a CAM. You can get a CAM ready for Setanta from the following online stores: Comet or Argos (Search "Setanta"). Alternatively, you can get these direct from Setanta Sport or from Ebay.co.uk. For more info, ask in our Top Up TV forum
Pay-per-event / movies?	Will Top Up TV offer access to movies, or pay-per-event sporting events? TopUp TV are promoting a service called 'PictureBox', which is a movie service available for an extra £5 a month. At any one time, seven movies are available to watch as part of this extra subscription. You need to be a Top Up TV Anytime subscriber.
Top-Up on Sky?	A common area of confusion - TopUp TV is transmitted over the air and received by your TV aerial (on the same broadcast system as Freeview)... you can't receive the TopUp service on a Sky box or via a satellite dish, and you can't use a TopUp TV card to get any extra TV channels on a Sky digibox. If you want to get the extra content on offer to Top Up TV customers, your options are: TV aerial - Buy a Top Up TV Anytime Set-top box and sign up to Top-Up TV Anytime. Satellite - The channels that provide a selection of TV shows to TopUp TV, are also available on Sky. Sky broadcasts the full channel, and not the restricted hours or limited content that you'll get with TopUp TV. With Sky, you'll need a Sky digibox and dish, which are supplied and installed for free when you subscribe to Sky. Go to www.sky.com to subscribe to a package that offers the channels that you're after. Cable TV - Channels available from Virgin Media provided you're in a cable area
Dolby Surround Sound	A question from site visitor Tim Pearson: "I am pretty sure that Dolby Digital is not transmitted within Freeview but is this the same with the Topuptv film channels? As myself & many others have thousands of pounds worth of A/V sound systems, you would have thought if paying for a service DD would be encoded in at least channels that would benefit from Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound." Our understanding is that Dolby Digital surround sound isn't transmitted on TopUp TV. If you have anything to add o n this topic, please comment in our forum's Surround Sound thread.
Top Up TV on your PC	Please see the FAQ on our On Your PC page
Top Up TV CAN	We've been asked where to find the Top Up TV CAN number, by a site visitor that's looking to get Top Up TV. From our understanding, the CAN is a number found on the Top Up TV Anytime box that gets associated with a Top Up TV subscription card. It should be noted that to get Top Up TV Anytime, you need a special Anytime set-top box - the Thomson DTI-6300. Other boxes, even those with a card slot, can't be used to get Top Up TV Anytime. To get an Anytime box, order online from Empire Direct, Argos and Amazon. If you have a Top Up TV Anytime set-top box, you can retrieve your CAN, which is a 12 digit number, by pressing the 'Menu' button, then selecting 'Setup' (Option 4), followed by 'Help' (Option 6). The Top Up TV CAN is shown on the next screen.
Setanta Sport	Top Up TV customers can now subscribe to Setanta Sports. Cost is £10.99 a month. You need a box with a suitable card slot (or the Top Up TV Anytime box). Setanta offers Top Up TV customers live Barclays Premiership football matches per season from August 2007, US PGA TOUR Golf, 60 Scottish Premier League matches per season, and live European football. More at www.setanta.com.
More questions?	For general help on Freeview, see our Freeview help page

Got a general question, or need advice on Top Up TV? Ask in our forum. Note that we're not connected to Top Up TV and can't help with questions about your account, or Top Up TV Anytime order.