Sky blames piracy for lost customers. Sky: it's time to wake up and smell the coffee.

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2031 posts

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#1864697 13-Sep-2017 19:07

JimmyH:

ockel:

nahhh. 50c a day to be able to skip ads - totally worth it. such a triviality.

By which I assume you mean paying the $15 a month to have recording enabled, so you can record shows and forward through the ads. In which case, while it makes things better in some cases, it doesn't actually fix the problem:

paying extra, to make a service that I am already paying handsomely to get actually watchable, leaves a bad taste in my mouth
it fails completely if channel surfing or watching a live feed, when by definition it doesn't work
it still jarringly interrupts abd breaks the flow of what is being watched.
So, no, your "solution" is only partial at best.

Problem: meet solution. If you choose to stick the head back in the sand and ignore the solution then you only have yourself to blame. I bet you endure more than 50c a day of misery watching the ads.

Alternatively use OnDemand and Catchup to get content that you might want. Any ads? You tell me. Oh, and do you need to pay that 50c a day to get access to that content? Goodness, another solution. Quick.... find that sand.

Sixth Labour Government - "Vision without Execution is just Hallucination"

rugrat

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#1864711 13-Sep-2017 19:40

Having to fast forward still interrupts program flow.

On demand is crappy picture quality, low resolution and crappy sound, I even hear clicking noises in the sound with on demand sound, but other then that no adds or channel logo's, what a pity can't have the best of both, it's like Sky is deliberately satabaging the on demand.

I'm using the decoder rental only option at moment, I don't have to pay for recording, so I figure it's s pretty good Freeview recorder at $19 a month and I'm liking not being bombarded by Sky promotions. Be interested to see what they do when turn mpeg2 off.

Does box sets have adds?, just looking at length of programs and it looks like it may be add free.

tdgeek

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#1864714 13-Sep-2017 19:48

rugrat: Having to fast forward still interrupts program flow.

On demand is crappy picture quality, low resolution and crappy sound, I even hear clicking noises in the sound with on demand sound, but other then that no adds or channel logo's, what a pity can't have the best of both, it's like Sky is deliberately satabaging the on demand.

I'm using the decoder rental only option at moment, I don't have to pay for recording, so I figure it's s pretty good Freeview recorder at $19 a month and I'm liking not being bombarded by Sky promotions. Be interested to see what they do when turn mpeg2 off.

Does box sets have adds?, just looking at length of programs and it looks like it may be add free.

I have no issue with ads, I FF through them or if its live I watch them or make a coffee.

Not picking in you, but if many hate ads lets drop ALL ads. Buses, signs, sales, papers, web and so on. No ads at all.

They serve a purpose, and generally they can be avoided. But ask a business how they would feel

nzkc

1572 posts

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#1864725 13-Sep-2017 20:05

tdgeek:

I have no issue with ads, I FF through them or if its live I watch them or make a coffee.

Not picking in you, but if many hate ads lets drop ALL ads. Buses, signs, sales, papers, web and so on. No ads at all.

They serve a purpose, and generally they can be avoided. But ask a business how they would feel

If its free to air, I have no problem with Ads. If I'm paying a subscription service and their are ads too I frankly feel ripped off. In my mind its one or the other: Ads or subscription.

Like you, I dont mind adverts at half time in sports - but that is my limit.

networkn

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#1864729 13-Sep-2017 20:11

nzkc:

tdgeek:

I have no issue with ads, I FF through them or if its live I watch them or make a coffee.

Not picking in you, but if many hate ads lets drop ALL ads. Buses, signs, sales, papers, web and so on. No ads at all.

They serve a purpose, and generally they can be avoided. But ask a business how they would feel

If its free to air, I have no problem with Ads. If I'm paying a subscription service and their are ads too I frankly feel ripped off. In my mind its one or the other: Ads or subscription.

Like you, I dont mind adverts at half time in sports - but that is my limit.

I think you have your perspective wrong on this.

When you pay a subscription, unless that subscription says no ads, you are paying for priority delivery of premium content you can't get on FTA TV.

I record most everything I want to watch, the ads don't bother me.

ockel

2031 posts

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#1864730 13-Sep-2017 20:12

rugrat: Having to fast forward still interrupts program flow.

On demand is crappy picture quality, low resolution and crappy sound, I even hear clicking noises in the sound with on demand sound, but other then that no adds or channel logo's, what a pity can't have the best of both, it's like Sky is deliberately satabaging the on demand.

I'm using the decoder rental only option at moment, I don't have to pay for recording, so I figure it's s pretty good Freeview recorder at $19 a month and I'm liking not being bombarded by Sky promotions. Be interested to see what they do when turn mpeg2 off.

Does box sets have adds?, just looking at length of programs and it looks like it may be add free.

So what solution would you suggest to overcome the FF problem? Would you prefer Sky put a blank screen or a "Programming will resume shortly" service announcement (a la Duke with its NFL feed) when the Singaporean feed from Discovery or NatGeo is linked through? Or perhaps the Foxtel ads instead of the Sky ads? Unless Sky is doing the programming it has little control over the number and timing of the breaks.

Clicking noises in the sound - you should get that checked!

And yes box sets are ad-free. Save for a box set promo at the end of the episode.

Sixth Labour Government - "Vision without Execution is just Hallucination"

ockel

2031 posts

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#1864731 13-Sep-2017 20:17

nzkc:

tdgeek:

I have no issue with ads, I FF through them or if its live I watch them or make a coffee.

Not picking in you, but if many hate ads lets drop ALL ads. Buses, signs, sales, papers, web and so on. No ads at all.

They serve a purpose, and generally they can be avoided. But ask a business how they would feel

If its free to air, I have no problem with Ads. If I'm paying a subscription service and their are ads too I frankly feel ripped off. In my mind its one or the other: Ads or subscription.

Like you, I dont mind adverts at half time in sports - but that is my limit.

Would you pay extra to have it ad-free? $50m ad revenue across the subscriber base = $6/mth price rise, drop the ads. I can see that going down like a cup of cold sick.

And FTA is the worst oxymoron (along with good rugby and military intelligence). Its advertiser funded television.

Sixth Labour Government - "Vision without Execution is just Hallucination"

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Rikkitic

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#1864765 13-Sep-2017 21:01

There are different ways of doing things. Some are better than others. I also hate ads and I also resent having them shovelled at me on pay tv. I agree completely with the proposition that one of the things you pay for is not having to put up with ads. That is certainly how it used to be. That is how it is here on Geekzone. You watch free and get the ads, or you pay and don't. A selling point of pay tv, at least overseas, was that is was ad-free. New Zealand is the most over-commercialised country in the world in this respect and Sky is trying to have its cake and eat it to. I'm not surprised subscribers are leaving.

A much better system in my opinion is the the two-tiered one in the Netherlands. All broadcasting there used to be State-operated. Some here seem to think that is a prescription for State control, but it doesn't have to be and it wasn't in Holland. All the State did was run the infrastructure. Broadcasters were free to air whatever they liked, and some did. One was particularly known for this. This started out as public broadcasting only. There were different broadcasting organisations, based on subscription, dedicated to different groups in society. Gradually commercial pressure brought in advertising, but it is not allowed to interrupt programming. Instead, it is broadcast in blocks between programmes. If advertisers don't like this they can go elsewhere. In practice, it has worked well for years.

The other tier emerged after the 1960s when commercial broadcasting was allowed. There are now several purely commercial stations in Holland that broadcast popular programmes and interrupt them with commercials, but these are FTA. I haven't been back for several years but as far as I know this is still the system there and it seems to work well. Sky's model of charging and stuffing viewers full of commercials is an aberration.

Plesse igmore amd axxept applogies in adbance fir anu typos

rugrat

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#1864767 13-Sep-2017 21:06

ockel:
So what solution would you suggest to overcome the FF problem? Would you prefer Sky put a blank screen or a "Programming will resume shortly" service announcement (a la Duke with its NFL feed) when the Singaporean feed from Discovery or NatGeo is linked through? Or perhaps the Foxtel ads instead of the Sky ads? Unless Sky is doing the programming it has little control over the number and timing of the breaks.

Clicking noises in the sound - you should get that checked!

And yes box sets are ad-free. Save for a box set promo at the end of the episode.

The solution would be for Sky not to broadcast adds on channels they control. I'm not a sports person and other companies can do no adds for cheaper then what Sky charges. I know sports cost, but have no interest in it so my solution for now is not to pay for Sky basic.

As a side effect I'm now also locked out of seeing the adds so less eyes for advertisers money and $30 less a month for Sky.

The clicking noises are only on the downloads through a stereo system, all other content from other sources including Sky from satellite, Netflix are fine. Some programs are worse then others, so it looks like to me it's in the program.

You don't mind ff adds fine, for others like myself it's something I feel that I shouldn't have to do for paid content.
The solution for the ones that feel like me is to just stop paying Sky basic, or get rid of it altogether. If person loves their sports though, not as easy.

sonyxperiageek

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#1864769 13-Sep-2017 21:07

DickDastardly:

Pumpedd:

DickDastardly:

DickDastardly:

If Amazon do decided to get all excited about NZ rugby there are a couple of other thoughts...

Matches could be shown streaming in 4K, Amazon were keen to showcase The Grand Tour in 4k, so it could happen here..

Apple have reached an agreement to supply its Amazon TV app on the Apple TV 4 this year, which could at the very least stream in 1080p for the Kiwi's who have an Apple TV for their on demand content.

I wonder if Amazon will team up with an ISP here and offer their TV service thrown in as part of a monthly broadband package - Im thinking something like the relationship between Spark and Netflix.

If my monthly broadband included Lightbox, Netflix AND Amazon as part of the monthly subs, this would be pretty awesome and we Kiwi's will start getting some value for money when compared to Sky's mediocre offering. Good times to be a media subscriber in NZ, the landscape looks like its going to shift....

Interesting...at the overnight launch of all the new Apple hardware, there is apparently a new Apple TV which will stream in 4k, so when Amazon launches on the Apple TV, their content would be 4k - this is another possibility for rugby viewings in the future.

Its telling that so many people are (if they can) going for unlimited fibre. 100 mb fibre kinda seems the norm now!

Is anyone signalling an intent to capture rugby in 4k?

If Amazon wipe out Sky and take the reigns of showing the All Blacks, they regularly stream 4K stuff such as The Grand Tour, why wouldn't they want to? It may come at a premium to their existing subscription service, but its likely to be no-where near the level Sky charge....

It probably won't not cost as much as what Sky are charging now... Like it's been said many times in this thread before, the rugby rights are the biggest cost for Sky right now, and they only make a couple dollars profit per customer per month. And if Amazon were going to broadcast rugby in 4k, again they'd need the infrastructure here in NZ which will again bring costs up! OSB don't have the infrastructure to do 4k at the moment.

And Sky broadcast in 1080i not 1080p as someone said earlier... less bandwidth than 1080p.

Sony

Pumpedd

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#1864848 13-Sep-2017 23:28

From what I remember (other than premium content programming) most of the Sky ads were for Sky programs.

JimmyH

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#1867225 16-Sep-2017 10:51

ockel:

Problem: meet solution. If you choose to stick the head back in the sand and ignore the solution then you only have yourself to blame. I bet you endure more than 50c a day of misery watching the ads.

You seem to conflate my dislike of ads by inferring that I'm too cheap to spend a measly 50 cents a day for the recording feature. Sorry to burst your bubble on that, but I do in fact pay the $15 a month to have the recording feature enabled. I have done since I got the new box. It's one of the few add-ons I haven't dropped (yet).

While it does make viewing a bit more bearable, the issue is it doesn't properly solve the problem. You still get ads on live TV when surfing. And you still have to reach for the remote and fast forward every 5-7 minutes. Which I find jarring and interrupts the programme flow. Which I can live with on FTA as I don't pay for that. However, when I am paying handsomely for the feed, I don't expect to have to endure the ads as well.

I am prepared to pay good money for programming. I am prepared to endure ads on programming that I don't pay for on the (rare) occasions that I watch it. I'm not willing to do both.

nzkc

1572 posts

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#1867256 16-Sep-2017 12:24

ockel:

nzkc:

tdgeek:

I have no issue with ads, I FF through them or if its live I watch them or make a coffee.

Not picking in you, but if many hate ads lets drop ALL ads. Buses, signs, sales, papers, web and so on. No ads at all.

They serve a purpose, and generally they can be avoided. But ask a business how they would feel

If its free to air, I have no problem with Ads. If I'm paying a subscription service and there are ads too I frankly feel ripped off. In my mind its one or the other: Ads or subscription.

Like you, I dont mind adverts at half time in sports - but that is my limit.

Would you pay extra to have it ad-free? $50m ad revenue across the subscriber base = $6/mth price rise, drop the ads. I can see that going down like a cup of cold sick.

And FTA is the worst oxymoron (along with good rugby and military intelligence). Its advertiser funded television.

I clearly stated (I think Ive clearly stated it), if Im paying for it then I want it ad-free. If I'm not paying for it (e.g. via FTA) then adverts are fine since the money has to come from somewhere.

Really dont understand why people are struggling with this concept!

tdgeek

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#1867379 16-Sep-2017 18:36

JimmyH:

I don't expect to have to endure the ads as well.

I am prepared to pay good money for programming. I am prepared to endure ads on programming that I don't pay for on the (rare) occasions that I watch it. I'm not willing to do both.

Sky and FTA have the same business model, as do the vast majority of most businesses.

Income less expenses = profit

Sky includes ads. We can easily remove the ads and adjust the income, i.e. Sky Subscription

FTA has ads, its free. No its not free, it has ads, and possibly Govt funding, not sure how much

So, maybe we can petition Sky for being ad free, adjust the price and done

tdgeek

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#1867381 16-Sep-2017 18:38

nzkc:

ockel:

nzkc:

tdgeek:

I have no issue with ads, I FF through them or if its live I watch them or make a coffee.

Not picking in you, but if many hate ads lets drop ALL ads. Buses, signs, sales, papers, web and so on. No ads at all.

They serve a purpose, and generally they can be avoided. But ask a business how they would feel

If its free to air, I have no problem with Ads. If I'm paying a subscription service and there are ads too I frankly feel ripped off. In my mind its one or the other: Ads or subscription.

Like you, I dont mind adverts at half time in sports - but that is my limit.

Would you pay extra to have it ad-free? $50m ad revenue across the subscriber base = $6/mth price rise, drop the ads. I can see that going down like a cup of cold sick.

And FTA is the worst oxymoron (along with good rugby and military intelligence). Its advertiser funded television.

I clearly stated (I think Ive clearly stated it), if Im paying for it then I want it ad-free. If I'm not paying for it (e.g. via FTA) then adverts are fine since the money has to come from somewhere.

Really dont understand why people are struggling with this concept!

I agree, as does Sky. The ads subsidise the Sky subscription. As you say, the money has to come from somewhere. As long as Sky isn't rorting, you nailed it. And they arent, as has often been proven here

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