BT Offers Extra YouView Broadband TV Box on its Triple Play Bundles

Customers adopting one of BT’s triple-play broadband, TV and phone bundles have now been given the option of adding a second YouView (IPTV) set-top-box, for use in different rooms, to their service. But unlike the primary box, which is usually included at no extra cost, the second one won’t be free and you’ll need BTInfinity (FTTC).

The new Extra Box service, which will automatically include the same channel subscriptions and bolt-ons as the main box in the house, attracts a special 12-month subscription cost of £5 per month and on top of that you also need to pay an extra £99 (one-off) to help cover the cost of the additional hardware.

Alex Green, Director of BT TV, said:

“We are delighted to be able to offer BT customers the added flexibility of having two YouView+ boxes in their home. Over the past year, we have transformed our service by introducing pay TV channels delivered in fantastic HD quality on our market-leading YouView+ box. We believe this offers the best quality TV experience and the most competitive bundle with fibre in the market.

Our content line-up is growing by the month and offers everything from premium Sport to movies to download to own. Our recent developments have been extremely well received by customers and we now have a very strong foundation for growth as we carry on expanding our service.”

Naturally having two boxes could increase your broadband usage and so it’s interesting to note this line in BT’s press release when referencing the ‘Extra Box’ offer: “This is only achievable through the benefits of high-speed fibre allowing simultaneous viewing of live channels on multiple TVs, in stunning HD quality.”

The suggestion in this context appears to be that you can’t get the Extra Box offer with a standard broadband service and upon digging deeper we note that the offer includes a crucial caveat, which states that “customers will need to have a line speed greater than 34Mb” and “this covers the majority of Infinity customers” (this seems to be supported by Ofcom’s recent data). So no Extra Box for those on ADSL or ADSL2+ based lines.

On top of that you can only have one extra box (i.e. a maximum of two YouView boxes per house) and the extra box is not available with Sky Movies.