SkyOnDemand - content quirks

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ockel

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Topic # 189325 24-Dec-2015 12:58

While the range of content is adequate I notice that there are a few quirks:

- content available the next day on Neon (and even SkyGo) is not always available. Most recent example is The Chronicles of Shannara interviews available on SkyGo but not OnDemand.

- obvious Sky content that airs on Sky and Prime is not available OnDemand. eg The Crowd Goes Wild.

Has anyone noticed any other glaring omissions?

Juicytree

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Reply # 1456580 24-Dec-2015 15:58

Now that I have an HD television I generally avoid watching programs in SD. Quite a few Sky channels transmit in SD - I assume because of bandwidth availability until they have swapped out all the old decoders. I am certain Sky down scales most programs for that reason before transmitting them. What annoys me most is they then place them on demand in SD format too. I find this perplexing to the point of insulting. Why can they not make them available in HD in their "on demand" service?

ockel

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Reply # 1456591 24-Dec-2015 16:14

Juicytree: Now that I have an HD television I generally avoid watching programs in SD. Quite a few Sky channels transmit in SD - I assume because of bandwidth availability until they have swapped out all the old decoders. I am certain Sky down scales most programs for that reason before transmitting them. What annoys me most is they then place them on demand in SD format too. I find this perplexing to the point of insulting. Why can they not make them available in HD in their "on demand" service?

Agreed. But Sky has persisted in keeping Prime in SD for ever (at least until 2016).
And why do TVNZ and Mediaworks only offer their ondemand products in SD? It seems its standard for everyone but Lightbox.

JimmyH

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Reply # 1456596 24-Dec-2015 16:16

One person supports this post

My pet peeve is similar.

For quite a bit of footage from the US which is natively at 59.94 fields/sec they seem to do a strange conversion to 50 fields/sec before broadcasting it here, which causes annoying picture judder (this is particularly noticeable when the credits run) because of the frame drops needed.

Given that virtually every TV sold in the last decade can cope with US framerates as well as with our broadcast standard, I wish they would just broadcast the material at its native framerate. There are converters available that can be put between the STB and the TV for anyone who wants to cling to an old TV. They would be in SD anyway, as I doubt there are any HD TVs on the market that won't cope with both framerates.

rugrat

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Reply # 1456855 25-Dec-2015 01:31

I would've subscribed to sky movies this month to get the Old Star Wars movies. Missed the pop up channel, but see it's on demand.

On demand is SD only, so I won't bother. Be nice to have bigger selection of movies without having to record, not in the quality I want so I just won't buy that channel product.

tdgeek

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Reply # 1456889 25-Dec-2015 07:52

Odd. The obvious solution is to allow the user to select 480, 720 or 1080. That satisfies users internet speed capability, and gives the best UX.
Is there a limit on the upstream available to Sky?

BarTender

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Reply # 1457213 25-Dec-2015 22:23

tdgeek: Odd. The obvious solution is to allow the user to select 480, 720 or 1080. That satisfies users internet speed capability, and gives the best UX.
Is there a limit on the upstream available to Sky?

Nope.. It's all delivered off Akamai, so there is a cost associated with hosting different formats as each format takes up x GB of disk on an Akamai node, plus Akamai clip the ticket on every GB downloaded. So it will have come purely down to costs IMHO.

rugrat

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Reply # 1457348 26-Dec-2015 11:59

BarTender:
tdgeek: Odd. The obvious solution is to allow the user to select 480, 720 or 1080. That satisfies users internet speed capability, and gives the best UX.
Is there a limit on the upstream available to Sky?

Nope.. It's all delivered off Akamai, so there is a cost associated with hosting different formats as each format takes up x GB of disk on an Akamai node, plus Akamai clip the ticket on every GB downloaded. So it will have come purely down to costs IMHO.

Yet others can do it, and they're only getting around $13 a month off each subscriber, and they can still make money from doing it. Light box has a lot of free subscribers at moment so doubt they're making money, but it must be affordable for them.

ockel

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Reply # 1457428 26-Dec-2015 15:57

rugrat:
BarTender:
tdgeek: Odd. The obvious solution is to allow the user to select 480, 720 or 1080. That satisfies users internet speed capability, and gives the best UX.
Is there a limit on the upstream available to Sky?

Nope.. It's all delivered off Akamai, so there is a cost associated with hosting different formats as each format takes up x GB of disk on an Akamai node, plus Akamai clip the ticket on every GB downloaded. So it will have come purely down to costs IMHO.

Yet others can do it, and they're only getting around $13 a month off each subscriber, and they can still make money from doing it. Light box has a lot of free subscribers at moment so doubt they're making money, but it must be affordable for them.

\

Whether they're making money (any of them) is questionable. Whether they make any money in the long run is also very questionable.