—Five Cricket VOD: Five’s highlights from this summer’s Ashes Test series will be shown online via its Demand Five VOD platform—and the Publicis-owned Zenith Optimedia agency has bought up all the ad inventory surrounding it and a new cricket mini-site. Each 45-minute highlights show will go online from 10pm each day (BSkyB (NYSE: BSY) has the live rights as usual).

—Virgin Media-Picturebox: Virgin will add Universal Pictures’ subscription-only, on-demand movie service Picturebox, joining BT Vision and Tiscali as UK clients. Virgin Media’s 3.6 million TV customers will be able to choose from up to 28 films at any one time, some in HD, for a £5 per month. This month VMED announced plans to launch an unlimited music download service in partnership with Universal Music.

—PVR stats: The UK now has 8.9 million personal digital recorders in use, of varying stripes, Ofcom says in its latest digital TV update for Q109. Sky+ leads on over 5 million, Freeview+ on 2.6 million, Virgin’s V+ has over 600,000 and BT (NYSE: BT) Vision and Top Up TV make up another 600,000.