How Will Sky Respond to Freesat

On Fri, 09 May 2008 18:47:57 +0100, PeeGee
wrote:

For your £399 you get a Sky HD box which gives you the equivalent of a
single tuner SD receiver - no PVR and no HD functions.

No. Without subscription you still get the free HD channels. (BBC HD,
Channel 4 HD, Luxe.TV HD)


--

On Fri, 9 May 2008 15:47:56 +0100, "John Russell"
wrote:

Freesat is just a rebranding excercise for
UK SAT FTA.

And a backwards step at that considering that it stops you watching
all those nasty other FTA channels which aren't owned or controlled by
the BBC and ITV..

--

On Sat, 10 May 2008 16:34:21 GMT, (Zero Tolerance) wrote:

On Fri, 09 May 2008 18:06:00 BST, Tennant Stuart
wrote:

Except that on Freesat the drive's recording capacity is doubled.

Impossible. The receivers are recording the exact same bitstreams so
they'll take up the exact same amount of space.

It's probably a reference to the fact that for the 160GB Sky+ PVR & 300GB Sky HD PVR half of the
drive capacity is reserved for Sky use & thus unavailable for a user's recordings.
--

Cheers

Nigel Barker
Live from the sunny Cote d'Azur

"Nigel Barker" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 10 May 2008 16:34:21 GMT, (Zero
Tolerance) wrote:

On Fri, 09 May 2008 18:06:00 BST, Tennant Stuart
wrote:

Except that on Freesat the drive's recording capacity is doubled.

Impossible. The receivers are recording the exact same bitstreams so
they'll take up the exact same amount of space.

It's probably a reference to the fact that for the 160GB Sky+ PVR & 300GB
Sky HD PVR half of the
drive capacity is reserved for Sky use & thus unavailable for a user's
recordings.

They shouldn't be allowed to do this IMO, if the user disables Anytime
function the disk space should be freed up for own use.

--

Cheers

Nigel Barker
Live from the sunny Cote d'Azur

"Brian McIlwrath" wrote in message
...
jb wrote:
:
: Noone pays ?399 for SkyHD! Why would you want a one unless you had Sky
TV
: (any level at all - ?16/month and up)??

: hang on ?399 is a) the price quoted on skys current website and b)
the
: cheap price.. because if you take the subscription route which you
suggest

You are not reading what I said! The SkyHD STB is no longer attractive
to non-Sky subscribers as it won't do its PVR functionality without an
extra
payment. Yes they *will* sell it to you for £399 - but why would you want
it
when you could buy it from eBay from between £150 and £250!

: ive just taken an glance at their HD subscription packages and even the
: 'cheap' ones without phone or broadband are very roughly a staggering
fifty
: quid or so a month.. i can hardly beieve how dear their packages im a
: millionaire and even i couldnt affords that !!

You are not reading it correctly then! I pay £34/month which includes
4-Mix
Sky (£19), £10 HD charges for an *extra* 9 HD channels which will never be
on Freesat and £5 for 8-Meg Broadband. I get the PVR (Sky+) features of
the
SkyHD box thrown in.

hmm.. just out of interest perhapse you might wish to give us some idea of
your sky upload and download speeds .. i just posted details of a good site
where you can easilly check your upload and download speeds..

also i was wondering if you have a giabyte per month download limit at all?

in reply to the above.. its all about choice isnt it - and the more choice
there is the better for the consumer surely.. more competitiion will lead
to more competitive practices and far more competitive prices for everyone
...

i see a golden era of television dawning with choice at the heart of these
changes- the likes of which weve never even dreamed of before...

cheers

jb


The £10 for extra HD channels is optional - for the last year I just had
BBCHD,
C4HD (and Luxe TV)

"John Russell" wrote in message
...

"Nigel Barker" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 9 May 2008 09:59:05 +0000 (UTC), Brian McIlwrath
wrote:

jb wrote:
:
: Noone pays ?399 for SkyHD! Why would you want a one unless you had
Sky TV
: (any level at all - ?16/month and up)??

: hang on ?399 is a) the price quoted on skys current website and b)
the
: cheap price.. because if you take the subscription route which you
suggest

You are not reading what I said! The SkyHD STB is no longer attractive
to non-Sky subscribers as it won't do its PVR functionality without an
extra
payment. Yes they *will* sell it to you for £399 - but why would you want
it
when you could buy it from eBay from between £150 and £250!

: ive just taken an glance at their HD subscription packages and even the
: 'cheap' ones without phone or broadband are very roughly a staggering
fifty
: quid or so a month.. i can hardly beieve how dear their packages im
a
: millionaire and even i couldnt affords that !!

You are not reading it correctly then! I pay £34/month which includes
4-Mix
Sky (£19), £10 HD charges for an *extra* 9 HD channels which will never
be
on Freesat and £5 for 8-Meg Broadband. I get the PVR (Sky+) features of
the
SkyHD box thrown in.

The £10 for extra HD channels is optional - for the last year I just had
BBCHD,
C4HD (and Luxe TV)

The price for all 16 HD channels is 55 pounds per month (6 Entertainment
Mixes, Sports & Movie Mix +
HD subscription)
--

Are you implying those channels would cost nothing from SKY in SD?
The fact is there is no such thing as a free lunch. The BBC has to fund
it's sat services form some where. Some pundits are asking where that
money is coming from, and if it's fair to the majoity of BBC users for the
Licence Fee to be used to fund them.

please forgive me if im wandering a bit off topic but i honestly cant see
any point in freeview now that a much better service has emerged for the
general public

perhapse im out of touch but i can actually imagine a situation in a couple
of years where freeview is abandoned befor its even rolled out..

the jist of my point is that surely a single satellite beam is far more
ecconomical than developing running managing and maitaining hundreds and
hundreds (if not thousands) of freeview terestrial transmission and sub
transmission stations! Especially if the dsatellite beanm is here to stay
regardles of how it all pans out (eg theyre surely not going to pull say the
bbc from 28.5 come what may).

cheers

jb

"Zero Tolerance" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 9 May 2008 01:20:19 +0100, "jb" wrote:

ive just taken an glance at their HD subscription packages and even the
'cheap' ones without phone or broadband are very roughly a staggering
fifty
quid or so a month.. i can hardly beieve how dear their packages im a
millionaire and even i couldnt affords that !!

All subscription packages INCLUDE phone and broadband, so I'm not sure
what you're looking at.

i was reading the following:


http://sky.com/hd/join-sky-hd.htm


Sky subscription packges including HD, PVR, phone and broadband start
at at £26 per month.

That's if you want to pay - if not, there's a perfectly good free
service too.

--

"Brian W" wrote in message
...

"Nigel Barker" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 10 May 2008 16:34:21 GMT, (Zero
Tolerance) wrote:

On Fri, 09 May 2008 18:06:00 BST, Tennant Stuart
wrote:

Except that on Freesat the drive's recording capacity is doubled.

Impossible. The receivers are recording the exact same bitstreams so
they'll take up the exact same amount of space.

It's probably a reference to the fact that for the 160GB Sky+ PVR & 300GB
Sky HD PVR half of the
drive capacity is reserved for Sky use & thus unavailable for a user's
recordings.

They shouldn't be allowed to do this IMO, if the user disables Anytime
function the disk space should be freed up for own use.

--

Cheers

Nigel Barker
Live from the sunny Cote d'Azur



Sky is "the user".

The customer is merely the mug who pays them.

On Sat, 10 May 2008 19:30:21 +0200, Nigel Barker
wrote:

It's probably a reference to the fact that for the 160GB Sky+ PVR & 300GB Sky HD PVR half of the
drive capacity is reserved for Sky use & thus unavailable for a user's recordings.

Well that's just silly - no Sky box is marketed on Gb capacity, only
ever on storage time. The regular Sky+ box is 40 hours (80gb), the
Sky+HD is 80 hours SD/20 hours HD (160gb). If Sky choose to put extra
disc space into the boxes for their own use then that's up to them,
but that's not advertised or sold as "your" disc space so there should
be no expectation of being able to use it.

--

On Mon, 12 May 2008 10:22:58 GMT, (Zero Tolerance) wrote:

On Sat, 10 May 2008 19:30:21 +0200, Nigel Barker
wrote:

It's probably a reference to the fact that for the 160GB Sky+ PVR & 300GB Sky HD PVR half of the
drive capacity is reserved for Sky use & thus unavailable for a user's recordings.

Well that's just silly - no Sky box is marketed on Gb capacity, only
ever on storage time. The regular Sky+ box is 40 hours (80gb), the
Sky+HD is 80 hours SD/20 hours HD (160gb). If Sky choose to put extra
disc space into the boxes for their own use then that's up to them,
but that's not advertised or sold as "your" disc space so there should
be no expectation of being able to use it.

True. On various Sky digiboxes there are many other facilities that even Sky don't use e.g. Ethernet
port, USB port, second card slot, SATA port, 9-pin serial port etc.
--

Cheers

Nigel Barker
Live from the sunny Cote d'Azur