Open....

Open.... was the trading name of Open Interactive Limited, which was a subsidiary of British Interactive Broadcasting. British Interactive Broadcasting was in turn owned by a consortium consisting of companies involving HSBC, British Telecom, Matsushita and BSkyB. Launching a few months late in August 1999, it only survived until the service was acquired and rebranded by BSkyB in October 2001, losing GB£116 million. The service was awarded a Design Council Millennium Product Award.

Following disappointing revenues and a shift in marketing at Sky, BSkyB bought out the remaining shares of Open in May 2001 and the service was rebranded as "Sky Active".

Open was marketed as the flagship Interactive TV service on the then newly launched Sky Digital platform in the UK. Open was originally designed to house all of Sky Digital's interactive functions under the one name and in the one place.

Open had a state of the art fully refurbished head office in Farringdon Street, London where its own content was designed and built. The offices also housed their service control room and the services proxy servers (for when users digiboxes dialled to download and upload data). Transmission took place at the then BT Teleport site in North London.

Services included Shopping, email, gaming, banking and information services like film guides or weather. The content was extensive and wide ranging, however it was a "walled garden" as users could not go on the Internet or on traditional web pages. All content was specifically designed for use on Open and was not available on any other platform.

During its short life, and despite Open processing 65 000 shopping transactions, it lost £116 million.

Access was available to all Sky Digital subscribers and could be accessed at any time by pressing the "Interactive" button on customer's Sky Digital remote control.

Open.... was marketed as being available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for the customer's convenience. However, in reality, the service was unavailable for a number of minutes at quieter times (generally around 4 am each morning) when Open....'s proxy server software was being updated. This update mean that digiboxes could not connect online and left customers unable to make purchases or download weather forecasts etc...

Users could navigate through Open.... using either the number keys or via the four coloured buttons typically on their Sky Digital remote control. Other buttons which were used included the "back-up" button to go back a screen or the directional arrows also on their Sky Digital remote control.

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