VOD - Will Sky offer this?

Cable VOD - Will Sky match this?

I've hear people say Sky can't offer true video on demand
but as far as I can see there's no difference between satellite
and cable, both broadcast their channels via a single channel
and all vod needs is a single stream to each customer.

The cable companies will presumably store the content on
servers at each local headed so can't Sky do something similar?
Install some servers at Sky HQ & allow customers to select
which film or tv programme the require?


New NTL VOD service
http://forum.digitalspy.co.uk/board/...d.php?t=128846


++ The first product is called Movies on Demand (pay-per-view).

Movies on Demand is ntl's pay-per-view service and is like
having Blockbuster in your living room. You'll be able to view
films whenever you like and have access to them for a 24 hour
period. You'll also have complete control over the film in the
same way that you do a DVD (pause, rewind and fast forward).

Movies on Demand will have all the recent titles you're used to
seeing on Front Row as well as hundreds of additional titles.
At any one time you'll have up to 500 titles available to view
and there will be new titles added every week.

Below is an example of recent release movies and non-recent
release movies that would be available on this service:

The intended price for a recent release is £3.50
http://www.sowhatdoyouthink.co.uk/ofntlvod/modlist

The intended price for a non-recent release is £1.99
http://www.sowhatdoyouthink.co.uk/ofntlvod/smodlist/


++ The second product is called Movies on Demand (monthly).

As well as Movies on Demand (pay-per-view) there will also
be a subscription movie service that will offer 250 films a month.
Instead of paying each time you want to watch a movie, you would
be able to access as many titles as you want in any month, for a
set monthly subscription. The only movies that would not be included
in this would be the most recent releases. As before you would have
full control over the movie being able to start it at a time that is
convenient for you, pause it, fast forward or rewind it.

This would be an additional £8 on top of your existing subscription.

++ The final On Demand product is called TV Plus.

TV Plus will provide access to a range of top TV programmes and
series, as well as children's titles and music videos. As with all the
other On Demand content you will have complete control over viewing -
starting programmes whenever you want and all the DVD-like functionality
you would expect.

Here is an example list of the types of programmes that would be
available on this service:
http://www.sowhatdoyouthink.co.uk/ofntlvod/tvpluslist

This would be an additional £8 on top of your existing subscription.

There will be an option to save money by buying a subscription to both
subscription Movies on Demand and TV Plus in one bundle. This would
be an additional £12 on top of your existing subscription.


Catch-Up TV

ntl is also offering a free On Demand product called 'Catch-Up TV'.
Catch-Up TV will offer the most popular programming from the past week -
so if you've missed a programme you've got a week to catch up. These
programmes would include Soaps (EastEnders, Coronation Street,
Emmerdale, etc) as well as a wide range of additional content with
the full functionality available on all On Demand content.

Below is an example list of programmes that would be available on this service:
http://www.sowhatdoyouthink.co.uk/of...catchuptvlist/

Donna t wrote:

I've hear people say Sky can't offer true video on demand
but as far as I can see there's no difference between satellite
and cable, both broadcast their channels via a single channel
and all vod needs is a single stream to each customer.

That's precisely what satellite can't offer: at least not in
real-time.

Sky and even low bit-rate cable/ADSL providers will probably offer
real VOD quite soon. It will be achieved by using STBs with large hard
drives. The films etc. will be constantly pushed into the boxes at a
relatively slow bit-rate. They will be encrypted. Once they are there
all that is needed is to authorise access in order to have real VOD.
MPEG4 would allow you to have perhaps 100 films on a standard 80Gb
hard drive.

I personally can't see the point of paying £3 or more to view a film
once when you can buy the DVD (with all its superior sound and extras)
for not a lot more, watch it many times, lend it to friends and then
finally sell it on.

--
Digibox problem? : A reboot solves 90% of these.
The Sky Digital FAQ: http://tinyurl.com/yvnsy
How to get UK TV overseas: http://tinyurl.com/6p73
Fed up with logos / red buttons? : http://logofreetv.org/
BBC gone? : http://www.astra2d.co.uk/
----
Only the truth as I see it.
No monies return'd. ;-)

On 2 Jun 2004 19:24:37 -0700, (Donna t) wrote:

I've hear people say Sky can't offer true video on demand
but as far as I can see there's no difference between satellite
and cable, both broadcast their channels via a single channel
and all vod needs is a single stream to each customer.

You've overlooked how it works. When a cable customer views video on
demand (which doesn't exist yet!) what they're seeing is video which
is sent directly to their set top box from the cable head-end. It's
like making a phone call - your phone call is sent through only to the
phone that you want to talk to. It's not broadcast all across the
world just so that the one phone you want can pick it up.

Satellite is, obviously, different. Whatever you want to send to
someone has to actually be sent to everyone, and just marked "this is
only for Mr Foo". That's no problem, but it takes up a lot of space.

If every one of Sky's eight million customers all wanted to watch
something "on demand" all at the same time, then Sky would need to be
able to broadcast eight million channels at once. The cost of this
would be fairly substantial.

As it stands, both Sky (and cable) offer what is more commonly called
'Near Video On Demand' or NVOD. This reduces the number of
simultaneous channels required, by limiting the choice and timing.
Effectively it's "you can watch whatever you want, as long as it's
this" and "you can watch it whenever you want, as long as it's at one
of these times". That way, every one of Sky's eight million customers
can all watch something "nearly on demand" at the same time, but what
each of those customers is actually watching will be one of only 100
distinct choices at any moment in time.

(Technology like Sky+ gets around it some more, by enabling the
pause/rewind kind of functions which would otherwise not be
available.)

But really, for 'true' video on demand, you need some kind of wired
link - which means cable (if they ever offer the service for real) or,
right now, Homechoice.

Zero Tolerance wrote:

But really, for 'true' video on demand, you need some kind of wired
link - which means cable

No, that isn't so for the reasons I gave. All you need is a hard
drive.

--
Digibox problem? : A reboot solves 90% of these.
The Sky Digital FAQ: http://tinyurl.com/yvnsy
How to get UK TV overseas: http://tinyurl.com/6p73
Fed up with logos / red buttons? : http://logofreetv.org/
BBC gone? : http://www.astra2d.co.uk/
----
Only the truth as I see it.
No monies return'd. ;-)

Jomtien wrote in message . ..
Zero Tolerance wrote:

But really, for 'true' video on demand, you need some kind of wired
link - which means cable

No, that isn't so for the reasons I gave. All you need is a hard
drive.

Hmmm, 120Gb hard drive in sky plus stores approximately 60 hours which
would be around 30 films, not exactly what I normally think of as VOD.
But increase that by an order of magnitude to 600 hours and suddenly
it sounds quite attractive.
How long before we can have Terabyte hard drives in consumer
electronics at reasonable prices? And it would have to be reasonable
since I suspect most people wouldn't be willing to spend several
hundred quid on a product that is only really saving the effort of
walking round the corner to the video shop.

Steve Bosman wrote:

No, that isn't so for the reasons I gave. All you need is a hard
drive.

Hmmm, 120Gb hard drive in sky plus stores approximately 60 hours which
would be around 30 films, not exactly what I normally think of as VOD.
But increase that by an order of magnitude to 600 hours and suddenly
it sounds quite attractive.

The standard Sky+ has only a 40Gb drive, or some 20 hours.

However, as I said, MPEG4 would be used thus allowing for perhaps 100
or more films instantly available on a 100Gb drive. These could rotate
automatically. Thousands more could be available for pre-order in a
couple of hours.

--
Digibox problem? : A reboot solves 90% of these.
The Sky Digital FAQ: http://tinyurl.com/yvnsy
How to get UK TV overseas: http://tinyurl.com/6p73
Fed up with logos / red buttons? : http://logofreetv.org/
BBC gone? : http://www.astra2d.co.uk/
----
Only the truth as I see it.
No monies return'd. ;-)

"Jomtien" wrote in message
...
Steve Bosman wrote:

No, that isn't so for the reasons I gave. All you need is a hard
drive.

Hmmm, 120Gb hard drive in sky plus stores approximately 60 hours which
would be around 30 films, not exactly what I normally think of as VOD.
But increase that by an order of magnitude to 600 hours and suddenly
it sounds quite attractive.

The standard Sky+ has only a 40Gb drive, or some 20 hours.

However, as I said, MPEG4 would be used thus allowing for perhaps 100
or more films instantly available on a 100Gb drive. These could rotate
automatically. Thousands more could be available for pre-order in a
couple of hours.

Imagine if we had a combination of the idea above and what we have now. The
HDs would only need to store the first 15 minutes of X number of films. Once
you start watching the first 15 minutes, the box would start recording from
whichever Box Office channel was showing the film. By time you had watched
the first 15 minutes, the box would should have managed to record the rest
of the film, or at least some of it.

Does that make sense? It does to me, but I know what I was trying to say.

David Lees wrote:

Imagine if we had a combination of the idea above and what we have now. The
HDs would only need to store the first 15 minutes of X number of films. Once
you start watching the first 15 minutes, the box would start recording from
whichever Box Office channel was showing the film. By time you had watched
the first 15 minutes, the box would should have managed to record the rest
of the film, or at least some of it.

I doubt that this would happen as such as the way that programmes are
currently broadcast and stored doesn't lend itself to this sort of
thing. This applies in spades to BO films.
However I can certainly see something like that happening with MPEG4
broadcast in chunks.

--
Digibox problem? : A reboot solves 90% of these.
The Sky Digital FAQ: http://tinyurl.com/yvnsy
How to get UK TV overseas: http://tinyurl.com/6p73
Fed up with logos / red buttons? : http://logofreetv.org/
BBC gone? : http://www.astra2d.co.uk/
----
Only the truth as I see it.
No monies return'd. ;-)

Jomtien wrote in message . ..
Steve Bosman wrote:

No, that isn't so for the reasons I gave. All you need is a hard
drive.

Hmmm, 120Gb hard drive in sky plus stores approximately 60 hours which
would be around 30 films, not exactly what I normally think of as VOD.
But increase that by an order of magnitude to 600 hours and suddenly
it sounds quite attractive.

The standard Sky+ has only a 40Gb drive, or some 20 hours.

I know, but since I don't regard it as large enough for a PVR I'm
definitely
going to have a hard time liking it for VOD.

However, as I said, MPEG4 would be used thus allowing for perhaps 100
or more films instantly available on a 100Gb drive. These could rotate
automatically. Thousands more could be available for pre-order in a
couple of hours.

I personally feel 100 films might be too limited for me, I would be
hitting the boundaries far to frequently. Putting a bit of
intelligence into the caching might help though. If, for instance, Sky
know that I mainly watch SF and comedies then the system could choose
to mainly cache that type of film. I feel in any workable system
preordering would have to be a last resort, since unless I'm after an
obscure title or the lag time is less than, say, fifteen minutes I'd
still find the video shop a temptation.