In 1998, Kingston Communications became the first UK company to launch a fully commercial VOD service and the first to integrate broadcast television and Internet access through a single set-top box using IP delivery over ADSL. By 2001, Kingston Interactive TV had attracted 15,000 subscribers. After several trials, Home Choice followed in 1999 but was restricted to London. After attracting 40,000 customers, they were bought by Tiscali in 2006 which was, in turn, bought by Talk Talk in 2009. Cable TV providers Telewest and NTL (now Virgin Media) launched their VOD services in the United Kingdom in 2005, competing with the leading traditional pay-TV distributor BSkyB, which responded by launching Sky by broadband, later renamed Sky Anytime on PC. The service went live on 2 January 2006. Sky Anytime on PC uses a legal peer-to-peer approach based on Kontiki technology to provide very-high-capacity multi-point downloads of the video content. Instead of the video content all being downloaded from Sky's servers, the content comes from multiple users of the system who have already downloaded the content. Other UK television broadcasters implemented their own versions of the same technology, such as Channel 4's 4oD (4 on Demand, now known as All 4) which was launched on 16 November 2006 and the BBC's iPlayer, which was launched on 25 December 2007. Another example of online video publishers using legal peer-to-peer technology is based on Giraffic technology, which was launched in early 2011, with large online VOD publishers such as US-based VEOH and UK-based Craze's Online Movies Box movie rental service.
In 1998, Kingston Communications became the first UK company to launch a fully commercial VOD service and the first to integrate broadcast television and Internet access through a single set-top box using IP delivery over ADSL By 2001, Kingston Interactive TV had attracted 15,000 subscribers. After several trials, Home Choice followed in 1999 but was restricted to London. After attracting 40,000 customers, they were bought by Tiscali in 2006 which was, in turn bought by Talk Talk in 2009. Cable TV providers Telewest and NTL (now Virgin Media) launched their VOD services in the United Kingdom in 2005, competing with the leading traditional pay-TV distributor BSkyB, which responded by launching Sky by broadband, later renamed Sky Anytime on PC. The service went live on 2 January 2006. Sky Anytime on PC uses a legal peer-to-peer approach based on Kontiki technology to provide very-high-capacity multi-point downloads of the video content Instead of the video content all being downloaded from Sky's servers, the content comes from multiple users of the system who have already downloaded the content. Other UK television broadcasters implemented their own versions of the same technology, such as Channel 4's 4oD (4 on Demand, now known as All 4) which was launched on 16 November 2006 and the BBC's iPlayer, which was launched on 25 December 2007. Another example of online video publishers using legal peer-to-peer technology is based on Giraffic technology, which was launched in early 2011, with large online VOD publishers such as US-based VEOH and UK-based Craze's Online Movies Box movie rental service.