old3eyes:

nigelj: 
It's actually funny, I phoned up Sky and complained about this just the other day (although the primary reason was a decoder issue), naturally the response was "It's an Australian channel, we don't get access to that stuff".

I basically told her, that to me it didn't add up as Foxtel use the exact same decoders (pretty much) and it's extremely confusing/etc.  The Red Button/Active content that Foxtel has, is far superior to Sky's lack of content (the Weather channel in Australia is far superior).

Case in point for Sky News' Red Button services is the Queensland Floods, where they had about 4 channels worth of flood coverage (the flood coverage that NZ got, + at one point 2 live cameras + some other coverage which I think was on their Sky Business channel).

They also had the Red button setup for the Winter Olympics (although I left Australia before then, so never got a chance to try it out).

They have the technology, it's a pity they don't use it.

(for what it's worth, the CSR 'escalated' it to their Programming team, and indicated I'd hear back soon, more people calling in asking for it might help)


Edit:

l43a2:

allstarnz: yes, I agree. They need to get the active part, or stop advertising it.

the active stuff is mostly AUS based.. do you REALLY want that much aussie based news :P

Sky News is already AUS based, but have had great coverage of New Zealand events as well, in some cases better than TVNZ/TV3, particularly in Pike River (their Earthquake coverage was also decent).  It's a pity we can't get ABC World 24 (Australia) as well (instead of RT).

 

Does Foxtel use cable for their pay TV service which allows  interactive mode??  Sky NZ using  sat  would have to use the internet (most likely what the Ethernet port on MySky is for)  for a similar function or your dialup everytime you wanted to use interactive..