Those cloaked champions of cable, National Transcommunications Ltd. or NTL to their mates, have announced plans to launch the UK’s first video on demand service in the summer of 2000. The carrier, which already offers cable TV services in a number of areas, said that video on demand (VOD) will allow it to offer in-home access to a wide range of interactive services.One of the key features of the new VOD service is that users will be able to pause, fast forward, and rewind what is, in effect, a “virtual video recorder” that has seen much popularity in the States c/o Vivo and Replay.NTL says that, while early implementations of this technology will probably rely on a TV set-top box using magnetic hard disk technology, in the longer term, real-time VOD with these facilities will become available. Steven Wagner, the company’s director of media and marketing, said that NTL plans to offer the VOD service on all its cable TV services from next summer onwards.NTL, he said, is soon to launch the UK’s most comprehensive digital service and intends VOD to become part of that service in 2000. Recent reports of VOD on ADSL (asynchronous digital subscriber line), he said, glosses over a major deficiency in picture quality when delivered at two megabits per second (Mbps) to regular-sized TV screens.NTL’s cable, on the other hand, he said, will deliver true VOD at around 4Mbps and is “the only platform capable of achieving a quality our UK competitors can only dream about it.” To launch the VOD service, NTL is tapping the resources of Diva, a video on demand specialist whose technology is in active use on six cable TV networks in the US. The plan is for Diva’s VOD service to be delivered to NTL digital cable set-top boxes over the broadband network without the need for hardware upgrades or specialist installation