Broadband ISP PlusNet Quietly Launches New YouView Based TV Service

Sheffield-based Internet provider PlusNet has quietly updated their website to reveal the official launch details for their long awaited YouView (IPTV) based TV service, which is designed to be taken as part of a bundle alongside the ISP’s residential Unlimited Fibre Broadband (FTTC) and phone product. Here’s what you get..

Assuming you already own one of the ISPs aforementioned “fibre broadband” and phone line rental packages then the pricing suggests that YouView TV, which comes with an 18 month contract term, will cost an extra £5 per month and this includes the Entertainment channel pack as standard (15 premium Entertainment channels including Discovery, FOX, MTV, SyFy and History etc.).

On top of that subscribers can also take a Kids channel pack for £3.00 per month and or upgrade to receive most of their premium channels in HD for the same price. The channel packs are naturally subject to a minimum 1 month subscription. Sadly none of the above includes any of Sky’s premium channels, plus there’s no free BTSport content.

At this point subscribers will then be able to select from either a basic YouView TV (£99 RRP – £5.99 postage) set-top-box or a YouView TV+ (£199 RRP – £7.99 postage) box (note: the box should come “included” for free). Both include all the usual Freeview channels, video-on-demand, app support (Netflix etc.) and catch-up TV features, although only the larger YouView+ box includes PVR functions (150 hours of HD video recording).

On top of that the basic YouView box is free to setup, while the TV+ attracts a £50 activation fee. Customers who experience a fault may also require a TV Engineer to visit and in certain circumstances this may attract a fee of £50 (e.g. if you were responsible for damage to the set-top-box).

Further details can be found on the PlusNet Price Guide page, although at the time of writing the ISP hadn’t yet furnished us with an official press release or updated their public product pages to list the service or any specific triple-play TV bundles. In fact we only found out about it after a regular visitor from the ISP noted this Community Forum post.

Note: PlusNet’s TV boxes appear to be preconfigured, which means that if you already own an old YouView box from BT or TalkTalk then you cannot use it with PlusNet. Also remember that YouView boxes do not support WiFi, thus they can only be connected to your broadband via wires.