Big drop in Sky subscribers

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2031 posts

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#1563845 1-Jun-2016 19:48

quickymart:

I personally think SoHo should be part of the Basic package (at no extra cost). Paying an extra $10 for it - why?

I think you'll find that just about everywhere in the world HBO is a premium-addon channel at extra cost. Even HBONow is a significant price compared to its SVOD counterparts (USD15 vs Netflix at $9). Soho is predominately HBO with some Showtime (another premium add-on channel) and other content.

Take a look at HBO's financials - its an amazing powerhouse. Its margins, its business model, its balance of direct vs distribution. Its what Netflix aspires to be, financially.

Want it in Australia - its $20/month. Want that in HD too - add another $10/mth.

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

Bobdn

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#1563888 1-Jun-2016 21:51

Hi everyone, I thought it's time that I came clean and let you all know that I've recently signed up to Fatso, a Sky company.

I know voluntarily giving money to Sky will upset many people, if not everyone, on this thread but please understand that I didn't join Fatso to hurt you. It's just that...I like the way blu rays look on my plasma and I wanted to catch up on a few movies, that's all. Nothing more.

Please believe me when I say I wasn't forced into this - it was entirely my decision. And before anyone tries to stop me, it's too late, Fatso has my credit card details.

My hope is that one day the bitter Content, Streaming, Cable War will be over and we can all return to our homes in 1970s two channel New Zealand with Vision On at 5.00pm on Sunday afternoons. Until that glorious day, we'll all have to bear to crushing burden of consumer choice.

Good luck to you all.

ockel

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#1563891 1-Jun-2016 22:01

Bobdn:

Hi everyone, I thought it's time that I came clean and let you all know that I've recently signed up to Fatso, a Sky company.

I know voluntarily giving money to Sky will upset many people, if not everyone, on this thread but please understand that I didn't join Fatso to hurt you. It's just that...I like the way blu rays look on my plasma and I wanted to catch up on a few movies, that's all. Nothing more.

Please believe me when I say I wasn't forced into this - it was entirely my decision. And before anyone tries to stop me, it's too late, Fatso has my credit card details.

My hope is that one day the bitter Content, Streaming, Cable War will be over and we can all return to our homes in 1970s two channel New Zealand with Vision On at 5.00pm on Sunday afternoons. Until that glorious day, we'll all have to bear to crushing burden of consumer choice.

Good luck to you all.

well if you ever get bored then make sure you sign up, along with the other 4.6m people, to Netflix's DVD service too. As there are no late fees you dont have to worry that it'll take forever to return your DVD's.

And you cant watch VisionOn on Sundays at 5pm - you'll be tuned in to your one rugby game per week on TVOne, delayed of course at 4pm just before the News.

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

dafman

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#1563896 1-Jun-2016 22:20

Bobdn:

Hi everyone, I thought it's time that I came clean and let you all know that I've recently signed up to Fatso, a Sky company.

I know voluntarily giving money to Sky will upset many people, if not everyone, on this thread but please understand that I didn't join Fatso to hurt you. It's just that...I like the way blu rays look on my plasma and I wanted to catch up on a few movies, that's all. Nothing more.

Please believe me when I say I wasn't forced into this - it was entirely my decision. And before anyone tries to stop me, it's too late, Fatso has my credit card details.

My hope is that one day the bitter Content, Streaming, Cable War will be over and we can all return to our homes in 1970s two channel New Zealand with Vision On at 5.00pm on Sunday afternoons. Until that glorious day, we'll all have to bear to crushing burden of consumer choice.

Good luck to you all.

$100+ for sub-SD ad-riddled Sky offerings, you've well and truly left the 1970s behind you ... landing smack bang in the middle of the 1980s (-;

quickymart

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#1563920 1-Jun-2016 23:55

ockel:

quickymart:

I personally think SoHo should be part of the Basic package (at no extra cost). Paying an extra $10 for it - why?

I think you'll find that just about everywhere in the world HBO is a premium-addon channel at extra cost. Even HBONow is a significant price compared to its SVOD counterparts (USD15 vs Netflix at $9). Soho is predominately HBO with some Showtime (another premium add-on channel) and other content.

Take a look at HBO's financials - its an amazing powerhouse. Its margins, its business model, its balance of direct vs distribution. Its what Netflix aspires to be, financially.

Want it in Australia - its $20/month. Want that in HD too - add another $10/mth.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11422423

"In my opinion, Sky TV is most vulnerable when it comes to non-sports subscribers who must currently pay $10 extra to get its premium drama channel SoHo. To compete Sky needs to make the SoHo channel part of the basic package."

^ on this point, I agree that Soho should be part of the basic package. Yes it isn't in other parts of the world, but Sky could take the lead and do things differently (maybe even better?)

tdgeek

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#1563936 2-Jun-2016 01:16

Im not sure that Soho is the be all and end all of Sky viewing. At less than $2-50 per week its cheap viewing if there is content that anyone wants to watch.

Now. The doom and gloom for Sky has been won. There are two issues. prices and future. Future is up to Sky, they cant do a great deal until they negotiate with Optus in 2018. Not our problem. Those who see $100 too much to get Sky Sport now can have most of it for $56, sometimes less if less sport of interest is on, so thats the price sorted for many. Done. Recently they added $5 Friday which is new and got good reports here. Everyone is happy at the FanPass quality. So grab your sport, and NF and LB as well. Fair?

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darylblake

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#1563959 2-Jun-2016 08:09

SOHO is more of a premium content channel. Probably why it has a higher cost associated with it.

Yeh you get the nana's etc that love RIALTO, but most of the base package channels content are pretty crappy in my opinion. What I have gathered is people want the premium content stuff, but are not particularly interested in the crap. I think Fanpass is 'OK', and I think its priced rather cleverly.

I had sky with sport and don't even bother to watch any of the basic channels at all, its rubbish content the only thing that was semi-useful was the MYSKY box to schedule recording of freeview channels, but you can do this with so many other devices now anyway.

I think it costs about $87.50/mth to get sky in HD with Sport. (with no SoHo), Fanpass is $56 and NEON is another $20. But if you don't have VDSL or UFB it will not be smooth as you will saturate your upstream if you try to do anything else on ADSL2. So $76 is still better.

I dont know if there are many advertisements on NEON but I cant recall seeing them on netflix.

JimmyH

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#1564089 2-Jun-2016 11:06

I don't know if I qualify as a nana, but I like Rialto. It has some interesting and quirky films, esp the foreign language ones, that are a welcome relief from other movie offerings. Actually, I doubt it's the nanas who are the main audience for that channel.

I have nothing against Sky per se. I'm happy to subscribe and give them money as long as they offer a good user experience that's value for money - and at the moment that's marginal and I'm close to cancelling. As I have remarked before, personally it's not so much the content range, picture quality or price that is annoying me - it's the incessant saturation bombing of ads and promos that constantly interrupt the programming on so many of the channels.

I tried to watch something that looked potentially interesting on the Box channel last night. First time I have tried that channel since before Christmas. It wasn't so much a show with ad breaks, it was more like a constant barrage of ads and promos with an occasional content break!

Benoire

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#1564099 2-Jun-2016 11:17

The problem Sky have is that for content they don't purchase independently (i.e. Sky run channels only) then they don't control the advertising OR the timing of the programmes. For many channels, they act as a reseller, e.g. discovery, box, History, ESPN etc. Where they do control the channel, e.g. sports, movies, etc. then you'll see the advertising is of a different quality and often actually only refers to their own programmes (except prime which is an FTA channel and supplied for free via Sky).

Rikkitic

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#1564173 2-Jun-2016 12:11

I am also not a nana and I also appreciate Rialto. It is refreshing to have an alternative to the fast food Hollywood rubbish that otherwise dominates. I'm not sure how things work with external channels these days, though I know local broadcasts of feeds from America used to have to take account of the incessant commercial interruptions and those gaps had to be filled with other content. If that is still the case, Sky could at least try to find different short features (which are available) instead of endlessly repeating the same identical promos every few minutes.

Plesse igmore amd axxept applogies in adbance fir anu typos

rugrat

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#1564174 2-Jun-2016 12:14

Benoire:
The problem Sky have is that for content they don't purchase independently (i.e. Sky run channels only) then they don't control the advertising OR the timing of the programmes. For many channels, they act as a reseller, e.g. discovery, box, History, ESPN etc. Where they do control the channel, e.g. sports, movies, etc. then you'll see the advertising is of a different quality and often actually only refers to their own programmes (except prime which is an FTA channel and supplied for free via Sky).

Yes. But Zone, Box doesn't explain the barrage of promos and breaks on those channels. So it's the same on channels Sky does control. They even put coming up next written all over the picture before the end of some soho programs, what the?

I'm only keeping Sky at present because I have two mysky box's and don't pay anything extra for them, other then multiroom on one, which gives me free HD. If I had to pay the $15 and $20 extra on each no way would I be keeping it.

Have SOho at moment as following 4 programs on it. If it was only GoT I wouldn't bother.

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Davy

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#1564670 3-Jun-2016 00:36

dafman:
PhantomNVD:
Davy: No, the standard stream and it really is poor quality. I wasn't about to pay twice for getting SoHo in proper HD, but now the image quality is so poor that it's a distraction during the show.

Think he is (rightfully) suggesting it's not right to have to pay for SoHo and then ALSO an HD ticket... Thus implying SoHo should be in HD by default?

Yes, by any standard of reasonable customer service, if you pay extra to receive an additional channel, you should expect to receive that channel in a suitable quality to view - not degraded to the point that it is virtually unwatchable.

But this is Sky we are talking about, so any discussion of expecting reasonable customer service is probably not relevant.

Yes, exactly! And I'm sure it's worse quality compared to previous years, unless my memory is playing tricks on me.

ps2jak2

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#1565108 3-Jun-2016 15:14

Davy:
dafman:

PhantomNVD:
Davy: No, the standard stream and it really is poor quality. I wasn't about to pay twice for getting SoHo in proper HD, but now the image quality is so poor that it's a distraction during the show.

Think he is (rightfully) suggesting it's not right to have to pay for SoHo and then ALSO an HD ticket... Thus implying SoHo should be in HD by default?

Yes, by any standard of reasonable customer service, if you pay extra to receive an additional channel, you should expect to receive that channel in a suitable quality to view - not degraded to the point that it is virtually unwatchable.

But this is Sky we are talking about, so any discussion of expecting reasonable customer service is probably not relevant.

Yes, exactly! And I'm sure it's worse quality compared to previous years, unless my memory is playing tricks on me.

Some time ago they dropped the HD res because of capacity constraints to fit all the pop up channels. Res won't be going back up till they can convert everything to DVB S2 MPEG-4. I read about it somewhere here on Geekzone at the time but can't find the thread.

Benoire

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#1565249 3-Jun-2016 17:35

The conversion to MPEG-4 will allow them to increase the HD channels as they can more channels per transponder. Are they moving to H.265 as well as that could provide a massive increase to quality.

Spyware

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#1565345 3-Jun-2016 19:07

Benoire:

The conversion to MPEG-4 will allow them to increase the HD channels as they can more channels per transponder. Are they moving to H.265 as well as that could provide a massive increase to quality.

Decoders don't support H.265, even the Kaon. mySky HDi/+ couldn't obviously as originally designed and released in 2008.

Spark Max Fibre using Mikrotik CCR1009-8G-1S-1S+, CRS125-24G-1S, Unifi UAP, U6-Pro, UAP-AC-M-Pro, Apple TV 4K (2022), Apple TV 4K (2017), iPad Air 1st gen, iPad Air 4th gen, iPhone 13, SkyNZ3151 (the white box). If it doesn't move then it's data cabled.

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