Where is iSky???

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295 posts

Ultimate Geek

#423094 31-Dec-2010 23:39

Monopoly is a matter of critical mass. You may exclusively own your house, but this is not an issue for other people until you decide to buy up vast swathes of property in one location, which would give you the power to manipulate the price and quantity of housing. In many countries this is prevented by legislation such as squatting laws permitting people to occupy vacant properties.

Similarly, Sky's ownership of individual program rights is not an issue per se, but no-one would deny that they have cornered the market in certain areas, particularly televised sports. This gives Sky undue influence to control the pricing and availability of content. You would have to be a totally blinkered free market purist to rule out any regulation to address this situation.

How about requiring that all program rights are non-exclusive and available to at least two broadcasters?

A time-poor geek is hardly a geek at all

tdgeek

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#423111 1-Jan-2011 02:09

Compost

Sky has cornered the market? How so? It bought rights to sports broadcasts, it did not demand and force, it bid and won against other competing providers. That is the free market at work.

Maybe your legislation can force FTA TV to get the content that Sky has and for free to FTA users? Not everyone gets Sky for sports, they may get it for movies, or for kids channels, the Doco channels. Therefore your legislation should be the same for these other channels as these are also your so called monopoly?

I do see your point but this content costs, and FTA is not the business model that can support costly content I feel. Otherwise TVNZ and TV3 would have it.

Reciprocity

169 posts

Master Geek
Inactive user

#423450 2-Jan-2011 18:02

JimmyH: No, they have a better business model. Your example is analogous saying that if KFC makes their food taste much better to McDonalds, Burger King on Pizza Hut, then KFC has a "sort of monopoly" on fast food.

They do have a first mover advantage, insofar as they have already invested a large amount of money to build a good base of installed decoders and Freeview (for some inexplicable reason) decided not to ship with the functionality that would enable some channels to be added to the platform on a pay basis in future. However, they can't rely on this - especially with improving technology making other delivery channels like the internet more feasible.

Plus, as broadband improves, there is nothing to stop a business model developing in a couple of years where (say) the Rugby Union sells broadcast rights to a streaming service (eg some further development of the iTunes platform, or PPV with a credit card on the TVNZ on demand site). Sky has secured a temporary advantage with their business model, but will have to work hard to keep their product more attractive than competitors - its a case of innovate or die. In my case - they need to dial back the irritating adverts/promos before I cancel!

I think you've hit the nail on the head here.

Irrespective of whatever market advantage Sky has - it certainly seems to be completely unable to deliver on a single initiative that hasn't been lifted directly from the US cable TV model. They must be desperate to find a way to leverage the Internet to secure their relevance in the 21st century, (If I cast my mind back, i think they even tried to be an Email provider via the telly a while back... so they must have been at least vaguely aware of the impending prevalence of online media for a fair few years now.) Abjectly failed with their first online player... and now can't seem to be able to make good on any promises made so far for iSky...

Just a reminder on their last: "The service will be available before the end of the year, Sky says."
c.f. http://www.isky.co.nz in 2011... "iSky IS COMING"

I'm still trying to find any evidence of who's responsible for leading/delivering their Technology programme... The invisible man maybe? lol.

compost

295 posts

Ultimate Geek

#424104 5-Jan-2011 00:13

tdgeek: Sky has cornered the market? How so? It bought rights to sports broadcasts, it did not demand and force, it bid and won against other competing providers. That is the free market at work.

If I have the money to buy all the property in Wellington, I can bid and win at successive auctions without coercing anyone, but the end result is still the power to dictate how much housing is available and at what price. This is called "cornering the market" and truly is the unregulated free market at work.

Similarly, it's pretty clear that Sky have largely succeeded at capturing the high-value sports content that can be had in this country. I wouldn't be surprised if the ASB Classic was on Sky next year, now that the tournament is regularly attracting grand slam winners and former world #1s. I doubt TVNZ could stop them.

tdgeek:I do see your point but this content costs, and FTA is not the business model that can support costly content I feel. Otherwise TVNZ and TV3 would have it.

Broadcast content does not have a fixed price list and is determined by negotiation. Pharmac has demonstrated that it's possible to create a favourable price negotiation environment.

If all sports content was non-exclusive by law then a second pay offering would spring up overnight, and Sky's pricing would obviously be affected by the competition. This would in turn set up a strong case for negotiating cheaper content.

This would sure as hell be better than the current practice of the government funding broadcasters on a shambolic knee-jerk basis for events such as the RWC!

Another argument I hear time and time again is that the All Blacks will leave for Europe if they can't get paid here. Let them go I say - the UK's failed attempt to comply with the European Exchange Rate Mechanism should be a lesson for those intent on spending megabucks trying to hold back the inevitable.

A time-poor geek is hardly a geek at all

old3eyes

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#424132 5-Jan-2011 08:34

There's an update post at Press F1 on iSky.

http://pressf1.pcworld.co.nz/showthread.php?t=115135

Regards,

Old3eyes

ockel

2031 posts

Uber Geek

#424180 5-Jan-2011 10:22

compost:
Similarly, it's pretty clear that Sky have largely succeeded at capturing the high-value sports content that can be had in this country. I wouldn't be surprised if the ASB Classic was on Sky next year, now that the tournament is regularly attracting grand slam winners and former world #1s. I doubt TVNZ could stop them.

You're familiar with the fact that Sky no longer carries Wimbeldon? It used to have the live rights to the tournament but clearly market pricing vs advertising/subscribers meant that Sky was willing to relinquish the rights for TVNZ to subsequently acquire.

You're also failing to take into account what the rights vendor wants to do. In most cases its revenue maximisation for the respective sport. But there are instances where FTA and pay rights are separated - ANZ Netball for example. That was the choice of Netball NZ and has worked well for them. Both the AFL and NRL are concerned about the changes in anti-siphoning in Australia. The pollies have decided that the 3 or 4 BEST matches per week must be on FTA. Who decides which matches those are? The pollies? The regulator? What revenue implications are their for the sport code in being able to vend their properties? How do they best retain their sports stars from other codes? How do they ensure that all clubs remain financially viable when the Government decides what property they can and cant sell unfettered?

Broadcast content does not have a fixed price list and is determined by negotiation. Pharmac has demonstrated that it's possible to create a favourable price negotiation environment.

If all sports content was non-exclusive by law then a second pay offering would spring up overnight, and Sky's pricing would obviously be affected by the competition. This would in turn set up a strong case for negotiating cheaper content.

This would sure as hell be better than the current practice of the government funding broadcasters on a shambolic knee-jerk basis for events such as the RWC!

Another argument I hear time and time again is that the All Blacks will leave for Europe if they can't get paid here. Let them go I say - the UK's failed attempt to comply with the European Exchange Rate Mechanism should be a lesson for those intent on spending megabucks trying to hold back the inevitable.

The EU decided that the EPL had to be split into packages with no broadcaster owning more than 5 of the 6 packages. And Setanta was born. So British households that wanted to see their football had to subscribe to TWO paytv companies. Great consumer benefit. And then Setanta goes bust. Great for subscribers that can no longer see all the football they wanted. ESPN picks up the rights - and subscribers have to buy both BSkyB and ESPN packages to see their sport. Fantastic consumer benefit.

Did it end up cheaper breaking the rights into multiple providers? Households paid more in totality. Competition was a fallacy.

Meddling when the market isnt broken creates sub-optimal outcomes.

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

Reciprocity

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Master Geek
Inactive user

#424530 6-Jan-2011 08:22

Reciprocity:
I'm still trying to find any evidence of who's responsible for leading/delivering their Technology programme... The invisible man maybe? lol.

Ah - found it:
http://www.skytv.co.nz/company-profile.aspx?art_id=2198

Does anyone know anything about their "Director of Technology"? Seems he's been there for at least 7yrs (according to LinkedIn) ...i'm curious as to why he's not front-footing this product?

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Zeon

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#426078 11-Jan-2011 12:13

I've got Isky to work but it looks like its content isn't even hosted in NZ? We have 10mbps national (directly into Orcon who are meant to host the content) and 512kbps of international which is $5 a GB. The live streaming is very laggy and in netstat it looks like its coming from somewhere in the US so slow and expensive?! Seriously WTF. I wonder if all the ISPs who will offer Isky unmetered realized that it would be international...?

Speedtest 2019-10-14

Beccara

1469 posts

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#426102 11-Jan-2011 13:11

You got the IP the traffic was going to?

6FIEND

774 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#426237 11-Jan-2011 18:29

Zeon: I've got Isky to work but it looks like its content isn't even hosted in NZ? We have 10mbps national (directly into Orcon who are meant to host the content) and 512kbps of international which is $5 a GB. The live streaming is very laggy and in netstat it looks like its coming from somewhere in the US so slow and expensive?! Seriously WTF. I wonder if all the ISPs who will offer Isky unmetered realized that it would be international...?

I have a little historic knowledge of how this was intended to function. From memory, the CMS function was provided by "ThePlatform" and hosted in Seattle WA. The content itself was all to be hosted locally and distributed via Orcon's Velocix deployment (across Kordia's data circuits)

I suspect that your netstat output is reporting a lookup to the Content Management System as the first 'step' in the viewing process - which would be reasonable. If the media is actually streaming from the US, it's going to get ugly really quickly! (But I seriously doubt that that is the case unless something has gone very badly wrong.)

I hope this all gets ironed out for launch. (Whenever that turns out to be

)

Speedy885

182 posts

Master Geek

#426585 12-Jan-2011 17:16

6FIEND:
Zeon: I've got Isky to work but it looks like its content isn't even hosted in NZ? We have 10mbps national (directly into Orcon who are meant to host the content) and 512kbps of international which is $5 a GB. The live streaming is very laggy and in netstat it looks like its coming from somewhere in the US so slow and expensive?! Seriously WTF. I wonder if all the ISPs who will offer Isky unmetered realized that it would be international...?

I have a little historic knowledge of how this was intended to function. From memory, the CMS function was provided by "ThePlatform" and hosted in Seattle WA. The content itself was all to be hosted locally and distributed via Orcon's Velocix deployment (across Kordia's data circuits)

I suspect that your netstat output is reporting a lookup to the Content Management System as the first 'step' in the viewing process - which would be reasonable. If the media is actually streaming from the US, it's going to get ugly really quickly! (But I seriously doubt that that is the case unless something has gone very badly wrong.)

I hope this all gets ironed out for launch. (Whenever that turns out to be )

Using URlsnooper i found rtmpe://cdn.isky.co.nz/ = IP: 60.234.60.196 and when checked on en.utrace.de that IP address comes back to orcon so the content is being hosted in NZ

Zeon

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#426589 12-Jan-2011 17:30

6FIEND:
Zeon: I've got Isky to work but it looks like its content isn't even hosted in NZ? We have 10mbps national (directly into Orcon who are meant to host the content) and 512kbps of international which is $5 a GB. The live streaming is very laggy and in netstat it looks like its coming from somewhere in the US so slow and expensive?! Seriously WTF. I wonder if all the ISPs who will offer Isky unmetered realized that it would be international...?

I have a little historic knowledge of how this was intended to function. From memory, the CMS function was provided by "ThePlatform" and hosted in Seattle WA. The content itself was all to be hosted locally and distributed via Orcon's Velocix deployment (across Kordia's data circuits)

I suspect that your netstat output is reporting a lookup to the Content Management System as the first 'step' in the viewing process - which would be reasonable. If the media is actually streaming from the US, it's going to get ugly really quickly! (But I seriously doubt that that is the case unless something has gone very badly wrong.)

I hope this all gets ironed out for launch. (Whenever that turns out to be )

Ah yes this was probably the case.

Speedtest 2019-10-14

cws82us

788 posts

Ultimate Geek

#429159 20-Jan-2011 12:37

Isky is here u can login now www.isky.co.nz

join Quic and get free sign up when you click my link https://account.quic.nz/refer/250676

langers1972

1039 posts

Uber Geek

#429162 20-Jan-2011 12:41

Everything I click on says it's only available to subscribers, of which I am one of 5 years. Anyone actually got it to work (and am I doing something wrong?)

clevedon

1059 posts

Uber Geek

#429176 20-Jan-2011 13:36

Yep all up and working for me, just logged in. Just watching the Aussie Open tennis now here at work, all looks good.

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