Sky, TVNZ to launch new pay TV service

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#549558 24-Nov-2011 18:51

DonGould:
Linuxluver: National can't be trusted with public assets.

Given what they've done to the value of Telecom.... can they be trusted with private assets?

That was a situation that needed correcting long ago. Labour in 1990 never should have sold the network. It was worth at least 5 times the amount of money they got for it if we look at replacement value.

This was also after the NZ taxpayer had invested heavily in new infrastructure and equipment that was then gifted to the buyers who reaped the rewards in greatly improved returns form that investment.

It was theft.

There could never be any real competition while the incumbent telco had a national network to every home and business built for them by the taxpayer and effectively gifted to them by idiots besotted by the market ideology they obviously didn't understand in the first place.

National and Maurice Williamson did nothing to fix the problem for a decade. *Finally* Labour moved to sort it out and National, to their credit, have not interfered with the regulators moves to carry that on.

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JimmyH

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#549561 24-Nov-2011 18:54

Personally, I wouldn't mind dialling back the overt politics in the thread a bit - I thought the point of GZ was technology. If I wanted "which way to vote" diatribes then I would log off and watch the leaders debates on telly instead.

Not sure how people have leapt from TVNZ setting up a commercial JV, to some sort of cloak-and-dagger conspiracy to hand the broadcasting market to a (near bankrupt) mediaworks and loot the Treasury - but nevermind.

Two things interest me about this news.

The most immediate is what will it have on it and at what price - is it likely to be a better/cheaper option that satellite delivery, that it might be worth switching from a current Sky subscription to?

In the longer term, the reference to the potential future move of delivery to UFB is intriguing. Does this mean that if Chorus becomes some sort of open access pipe, with a lot of fast bandwidth available to whomever wants to pay for it, that in future we could see the removal of satellite constraints on channels and HD broadcast capacity, and the breaking of the hammerlock that Sky and Freeview have on the broadcast distribution channel?

mattwnz

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#549563 24-Nov-2011 18:57

DonGould:
Linuxluver: National can't be trusted with public assets.

Given what they've done to the value of Telecom....? can they be trusted with private assets?

To be fair, that was labours doing. National is more hands off with private business, which is why you probably won't see them touch sky tv.
Luckily TV over fibre is the future, and hopefully we will see some competition enter the market.

mattwnz

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#549566 24-Nov-2011 19:03

jofizz: Sigh, this is grim.
I'm a big fan of Freeview. We've lost Kidzone. We dont get Heartland. Will likely lose TVNZ7. Who knows what else.
What a crap deal for people who don't fork our for SKY.

Bah.

TVNZ will possibily save their best content for this pay channel. Currently TVNZ plays rubbishy low cost reality shows during prime time on their fta channels, and there is a lot of really good shows that don't make it on at all.

I am just wondering what has happened to tvnzs tivo investment. They had their own set top box with that, so why have they joined the competition instead.. I guess it is, if you can't beat em, join em. I just question what tvnz actually is now, and who it represents.

crackrdbycracku

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#549572 24-Nov-2011 19:13

JimmyH:

The most immediate is what will it have on it and at what price - is it likely to be a better/cheaper option that satellite delivery, that it might be worth switching from a current Sky subscription to?

In the longer term, the reference to the potential future move of delivery to UFB is intriguing. Does this mean that if Chorus becomes some sort of open access pipe, with a lot of fast bandwidth available to whomever wants to pay for it, that in future we could see the removal of satellite constraints on channels and HD broadcast capacity, and the breaking of the hammerlock that Sky and Freeview have on the broadcast distribution channel?

I just read the article (cough - press release - cough) on Stuff. Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about but this seems interesting to me.

It seems to be a New Zealand TV mega-site. It has all the content from TVNZ (which we get on TVNZ On Demand now) plus a paid for area where you can buy or rent stuff from Sky but you have to have the special box to get it.

What is it with the special box? One of the greatest things about Amazon is that Kindle now means app as well as eReader. Wouldn't Special Box plus app for your PC/ Phone/ Tablet, with the same log on so that they can track you of course, just be more current century?

Does this sound like iTunes plus TVNZ On Demand to anybody else?

It must be all on demand because you can't (wouldn't be crazy enough to try) do internet broadcasting. Sky does this because they have the money to pay for the NZ rights to the content we want to watch, like the stuff on SoHo. TVNZ bundles access to the Free To Air stuff as well.

But this way we get to watch it when we want without a MySky box but one of these SkyNet [?] boxes instead?

Sounds a bit 'solution looking for a problem' to me.

Is that how you all read it?

Yeah, trying to get away from the political side. If you want to be political vote on Saturday.

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jasonh

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#549575 24-Nov-2011 19:14

I could also do without the lectures wrt politics. Two days out you wont change minds with an audience at GZ, give them more credit.

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simcore

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#549616 24-Nov-2011 21:35

I thought it would be a pretty simple premise.

Our countries two biggest broadcasters are teaming up to build a strong product that protects themselves against the incoming onslaught from new media, streaming and competition from ISP's that UFB will bring.

Use each others expertise to help deliver something that protects against market erosion. Get in strongly and quickly in time for digital, get it in as many homes as possible (that can't afford standard Sky, or won't pay for it) and entrench your device in the market before others get their chance.

Expect digital on demand movies via Sky, which will be NZ's version of Netflix and expect their device first to the market if theyre lucky (and thats going to be the important thing, who will deliver a UFB ready, on demand capable, digital freeview box first and with effect)

Looking forward to the pending war for the viewer, it's not going to be a bad thing for the consumer by any means.

This isn't politics, this is just smart business.

ilovemusic

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#549622 24-Nov-2011 21:43

mxpress:
freitasm: Somehow I think TVNZ will be shafted in a couple years. And somehow I think taking down TVNZ6 and TVNZ7 was a bad thing for free to air (Freeview|HD) and the public in general.

TOTALLY agree!!!

Double ditto.

Sky must be laughing their heads off, every time they want a bit more of the TV pie TVNZ just bends over...

ascroft

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#549626 24-Nov-2011 21:47

I will be interested how they build an offer that gets more new customers without churning higher value existing customers. I am very interested in moving - partly because the rain fade problems are shyte, but also I see this as offering a more modern future proofed solution. I presume they will have an EPG with Prime on it.........

"Artificial Intelligence" - aka Machine Learning 2.0

mattwnz

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#549628 24-Nov-2011 21:51

ascroft: I will be interested how they build an offer that gets more new customers without churning higher value existing customers. I am very interested in moving - partly because the rain fade problems are shyte, but also I see this as offering a more modern future proofed solution. I presume they will have an EPG with Prime on it.........

I would say they would be going after the the TVNZ viewers who are currently paying nothing.
I wonder if it needed the competition watchdogs approval.

ascroft

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#549633 24-Nov-2011 21:56

Sure - but they can't stop existing sky customers moving if it is too attractive. And if it isnt at least mildly attractive they won't pick up the TVNZ customers. Interesting challenge - but they are as cunning as shyte house rats when it comes to pricing.......

"Artificial Intelligence" - aka Machine Learning 2.0

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mattwnz

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#549641 24-Nov-2011 22:06

ascroft: Sure - but they can't stop existing sky customers moving if it is too attractive. And if it isnt at least mildly attractive they won't pick up the TVNZ customers. Interesting challenge - but they are as cunning as shyte house rats when it comes to pricing.......

I am sure they will have their customer profiles sorted. A certain percentage would be signed up solely for sport, a certain percentage are mysky etc, so they will setup these new plans so that they don't cannibalize their other business. It is possible they may even do it under a different brand. I see it being more like their current 'basic' service, and a bit like their UHF service they had in the 90's, so they will be going after the more budget conscious buyer, perhaps mum and dad and grandma viewer.

Spyware

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#549673 24-Nov-2011 22:57

And grandmas just love IPTV services. I think the terrestrial service will push premium grade HD content or there would be no point, why simply shift people from the low bitrate SD satellite service. Why not keep the budget conscious on satellite and essentially over charge them for a substandard service knowing that they would never be interested in high quality high bitrate terrestrial and fibre services.

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nigelj

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#549715 25-Nov-2011 00:51

crackrdbycracku: Does this sound like iTunes plus TVNZ On Demand to anybody else?

It must be all on demand because you can't (wouldn't be crazy enough to try) do internet broadcasting. Sky does this because they have the money to pay for the NZ rights to the content we want to watch, like the stuff on SoHo. TVNZ bundles access to the Free To Air stuff as well.

To be honest http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10766273 suggests that it's going to be a DVB-T (UHF) type service, the whole 'over the fibre' would likely just be making use of fibre technology to deliver TV to Set Top Boxes like Verizon & many other companies overseas have for ages.

My understanding (and I'd have to dig around a bit for sources) is that Sky still own a fairly decent chuck of UHF transmission bandwidth, some/all is suitable for DVB-T (prehaps even DVB-T2), and MED told them to use it before Digital Switch Over or lose/release it. (Edit: Source: http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=106&topicid=88503)

If the Sky/TVNZ product used DVB-T, they wouldn't even have to retransmit the Freeview channels to make use of them for the product (of course, as a side effect, it would suffer from geographic limitations).

exportgoldman

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#549718 25-Nov-2011 01:22

freitasm:
YouTube? Are you folks serious? How can you compare YouTube crappy content, with TV stuff? I mean, there are TV series that are not on YouTube. There are the whole time to discover things on YouTube. It's a great content sharing thing, but until we have full movies on YouTub, it's just a gimmick.

(And yes, I know Disney is bringing movie rentals to YouTube in the USA).

I laughed as I remembered, as you did also, about Disney on youtube, but agree 100%, youtube is NOT television. You just can't compare them, youtube doesn't hold a candle to Sky TV's range of movies, the new SoHo channel's and other HD content. I want to flop down in the longue and turn a channel on and leave it to entertain me.

There simply isn't enough good content, focused around a few good 'channel's so people don't have to 'work' to get a nights entertainment on youtube. It just keeps stopping without interacting with it.

I didn't realise TVNZ7 and the other channel's were not free to air (is it channel 6?)

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