Top Up TV / Top Up TV Anytime

The Top Up TV+ box

The Top Up TV Anytime set-top box is the Thomson DTI 6300 receiver, which has a twin-tuner and either a 160 or 250 gig hard-drive (for up to 180 hours of TV - around 100 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 £99.99 including connection and first month's rental. Anytime boxes can be ordered online from www.topuptv.com, as well as from 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. Other Top-up TV boxes are available.
We also featured Top Up TV Anytime in Show 10 of our podcast.

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 £10.99 a month. You'll need the 'Anytime' set-top box , which became available in December 2006. These are available from www.topuptv.com, Argos and Amazon.

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.

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): 08444 158 158 or 08700 543210

Phone (Customer services): 08444 159 159 (approx 5p a minute) or 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. Site visitor Bob Timson suggests that 01592 587244 will get you straight through to Customer Services at national rates.

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 Digital - 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.
  
  

Answer moved to our Top UP TV Anytime FAQ

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.

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.

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.

For more information on getting or using a CAM with your digital TV, see our CAM UK Help page

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:

1. TV aerial - Buy a Top Up TV Anytime Set-top box and sign up to Top-Up TV Anytime.
2. 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.
3. Cable TV - Channels available from Virgin Media provided you're in a cable area
   
   

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 on this topic, please comment in our forum's Surround Sound thread.

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 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 Sports terminated their UK sporting service in June 2009. Prior to this point, it was possible to sign up to Setanta via Top Up TV and watch live Barclays Premiership football matches, US PGA TOUR Golf, Scottish Premier League matches per season, and live European football. More on Setanta.

For general help on Freeview, see our Freeview help page