British Telecommunications Plc announced yesterday that it has started technical trials of video on demand, saying that a number of UK television companies – the British Broadcasting Corp, Granada Group Plc, EMI Records Ltd, Carlton Communications Plc are to provide programming; it is also talking with Hollywood studios about movies. Northern Telecom Ltd is supplying the Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Loop equipment that enables digital video signals to be sent down copper cables, nCube Corp is supplying massively parallel processors running Oracle Media Server for the trials, in Kesgrave, Suffolk. Oracle Corp’s Media Objects is being used to create the television interfaces, and Oracle Media Net is connects users requesting services to the Media Server. Set-top boxes are coming from Apple Computer Inc.
