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Screenshop is a British digital television channel, owned by Sit-up Ltd. It is an infomercial-based shopping channel, selling a wide variety of products from TV Warehouse. On Virgin Media and Sky Digital, the channel has a 24 hour stream of its own, and additionally it broadcasts daily 1am to 8am, timesharing with sister channels bid tv, price-drop tv and speed auction tv. Each of these channels carries a different feed of Screenshop, broadcasting different products at different times. Both bid tv and price-drop tv are broadcast on the DTT platform, Freeview.
[edit] Rebranding and controversy
Example of Screenshop ident used before 29 July 2005
Since 2004 Screenshop 1 has been run for Sit-Up by Vector Direct. Vector broadcast their presentations exclusively on the channel, and eventually this led to the channel being stripped of its own identity. From 2005, it has been broadcast under Vector Direct's own 'TV Warehouse' brand (as TV Warehouse 1). This may be due to Vector Direct's appearance on the BBC's Watchdog programme, which was due to the company charging unknowing customers £99.00 for entrance into a "Travel and Leisure" club, in which entry was automatic with every purchase.[1] It is expected that Vector Direct do not use their own brand because of this bad publicity, however this has not been confirmed.
[edit] The Screenshop brand today
Screesnhop still continues today, on fellow Sit-up Ltd channels; bid tv, price-drop tv and speed auction tv between the hours of 1am and 8am. Vector Direct however, has gone into voluntary liquidation just before Christmas in 2007. The 2 channels have since been sold to JML (JML Direct TV). On 3rd March 2008, a Screenshop branded channel "Screenshop 2" launched exclusively on Sky Channel 683. The channel is currently showing a copy of fellow sister channel, bid tv. This may be a temporary measure, until a proper use is arranged. This could be either a similar "buy it now" format that is different from the other Sit-up Ltd channels, but similar to other UK shopping channels QVC and Ideal World. The Screenshop 2 channel is currently unavailable to Virgin Media customers.
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