Sky considering DTT service

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Flippikat

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#88503 17-Aug-2011 10:31

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/connect/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501833&objectid=10745390

From the above article:

"Sky has until the digital switchover in December 2013 to commit to digitalising the four analogue networks shelved when its analogue channels were pulled in March last year. After that it has another two years to implement plans. But Sky TV chief executive John Fellet tipped a decision before the switch.Sky was also considering capacity from digital terrestrial being combined with its digital satellite TV operation to allow more channels.

Fellet said the other option was for Sky to return the frequencies to the Crown. But that seems unlikely given the strategic advantage they give Sky over Freeview."

Interesting stuff - if they have 4 UHF networks, there's a huge range of options for them - subscription HDTV, free-to-air "sampler" channels to attract people to the subscription service, maybe even moving Prime to a less-cluttered mux so it can go HD???

sbiddle

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Biddle Corp

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#507778 17-Aug-2011 10:49

While this isn't new news, it is the first we've heard from Sky on the issue for a while now.

Word on the street 2 years ago was that they had entered into negotiations with hardware suppliers to build a network, and they made mention in their submissions to the MED over analogue shutoff that they shouldn't automatically lose their analogue frequencies and they should be allowed to reuse them for DVB-T.

clevedon

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#507830 17-Aug-2011 12:05

maybe even moving Prime to a less-cluttered mux so it can go HD???

That would be a waste of HD capacity, half the time Prime is home shopping or repeats of TCGW and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. I would rather NatGeo, History, BBC Knowledge or Discovery go HD than Prime any day.

keewee01

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#507831 17-Aug-2011 12:08

clevedon:
maybe even moving Prime to a less-cluttered mux so it can go HD???

That would be a waste of HD capacity, half the time Prime is home shopping or repeats of TCGW and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. I would rather NatGeo, History, BBC Knowledge or Discovery go HD than Prime any day.

+1 ... although there is the odd good show on Prime, but yeah - move a more informative channel to HD before Prime.

Flippikat

156 posts

Master Geek

#507840 17-Aug-2011 12:15

sbiddle: While this isn't new news, it is the first we've heard from Sky on the issue for a while now.

Word on the street 2 years ago was that they had entered into negotiations with hardware suppliers to build a network, and they made mention in their submissions to the MED over analogue shutoff that they shouldn't automatically lose their analogue frequencies and they should be allowed to reuse them for DVB-T.

Yeah, I remember reading a while ago that Sky were keen to keep rights over some UHF spectrum post-analogue switch-off.

From the article it looks like there's some sort of "use it or lose it" condition from Government - which is refreshing.

I wonder if anyone out there knows how that's being run, especially with the impending restack of DTV frequencies??

Flippikat

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#507860 17-Aug-2011 12:39

clevedon:
maybe even moving Prime to a less-cluttered mux so it can go HD???

That would be a waste of HD capacity, half the time Prime is home shopping or repeats of TCGW and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. I would rather NatGeo, History, BBC Knowledge or Discovery go HD than Prime any day.

True, but if it saves Sky money in the long term by moving Prime to a Sky mux, they may go for it.
There'd be no need to pay freeview to carry it, for a start..

Kopkiwi

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#509221 19-Aug-2011 21:19

Would rather they adopted a viewers choice ala Foxtel with the Premier League.

mthand

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#509233 19-Aug-2011 21:57

The idea of paying $20 pm for only all the sport channels on a digital terrestrial transmission is very appealing to me. Of course, they could do that with their current satellite transmission too, but haven't.

An internet capable tv with an internal dvb-t receiver could possibly be set up to authenticate valid subscriptions, without the cost of the decoder.

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Niel

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#509308 20-Aug-2011 10:20

They should move all the sport channels to UHF in HD for those that care, and use the freed up satellite space for proper TV channels. I can see us using Fatso a lot over the coming month(s).

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nickb800

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#509326 20-Aug-2011 13:06

I wonder what the investment horizon on Sky DTT would be, given FTTH will be in place in the next 10 years and might provide a better platform, especially with the trend away from broadcast content towards ondemand

pjamieson

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Chorus

#509922 22-Aug-2011 13:30

A bit more detail... http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/5482170/Sky-TV-ponders-alternatives.

Digital terrestrial television was probably only an "interim technology".

rugrat

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#510079 22-Aug-2011 18:06

I can't see them wanting to replace most set top boxes, as current ones can't do terrestial according to that article, so that leaves the sky lite option or selling frequencies back to government.

Spyware

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#510080 22-Aug-2011 18:09

Current plan is not to use D3 in which case they have no option but to convert all satellite transport to DVB-S2. All SD boxes have to be replaced anyway as can't do DVB-S2 H.264.

P.S. Most of the current SD boxes are also completely obsolete and belong in the bin.

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