Website www.indemand.com Founded 1985 | Headquarters United States of America Parent organization Comcast | |
Launched November 27, 1985 (1985-11-27) (as Viewer's Choice) Owned by In Demand L.L.C.
(33.3% Comcast,
33.3% Cox Communications,
33.3% Charter) Formerly called Viewer's Choice (1985-2000) Sister channel(s) Too Much for TV, Hot Choice Available on most U.S. cable systems Consult your cable provider Profiles | ||
In Demand (styled as iN DEMAND) is an American cable television service which provides video on demand services, including pay-per-view. Comcast, Cox Communications, and Charter jointly own In Demand
History
In Demand was launched in November 27, 1985 with one channel of Pay-Per-View content, as Viewer's Choice (unrelated to Canada's Viewers Choice). Viewer's Choice continued to expand in the 1990s when it acquired many defunct PPV assets.
On January 1, 2000, the service changed the name to In Demand. The first program upon relaunch was Rave Un2 the Year 2000, a New Year's Eve concert performed by Prince, which was taped a couple weeks prior. Traditional analog service was eventually discontinued, and it is currently an all-digital service.
In addition to Hollywood films and a limited selection of adult films, along with live and recorded concert programming, the service mainly distributes ring sports through pay-per-view, including the events of the UFC, WWE and TNA Wrestling, boxing events through HBO Boxing and Showtime Boxing, and independent circuits such as those with lucha libre. It also distributes out-of-market sports packages such as MLB Extra Innings, NBA League Pass, MLS Direct Kick, NHL Center Ice and ESPN College Extra where provided, along with Too Much for TV, a service which features 'uncensored' content from the shows of American Television Distribution and NBCUniversal Television Distribution. It was the former distributor of Howard Stern's Howard TV component of his self-titled Sirius XM radio show until 2013.
Since this network's first inception, the first main Viewer's Choice/In Demand channel (usually labeled as 'IN1' or 'PPV1' since 2000), signs off weekday mornings from 8AM to 11AM (Eastern Time) to feed promotions of upcoming movies and events of the next month to its headend affiliates. These are now sent digitally, though the channels continue to maintain maintenance periods in these low-purchased timeslots.
In 2010, In Demand began providing a free movies on demand service, Vutopia, offered on Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. The service offered uncut older movies organized in themes. It was closed down on June 1, 2015.
As of early 2012, as cable providers use more channel bandwidth for high-definition, video-on-demand and broadband services which do not require starting films at several intervals on several channels, providers such as Charter, Comcast/Xfinity and Time Warner Cable have removed most of In Demand's linear channels - beyond 1-3 standard-definition and one high-definition channel for mostly event programming - from their channel lineups, though the service offers up to 31 standard definition and 19 high definition channels, many of which are used internally within cable companies to distribute content to their VOD servers.