Cheap Sky Coming?

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clevedon

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#93219 16-Nov-2011 12:01

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10766273

CYaBro

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#545961 16-Nov-2011 12:20

But will they transmit from all current transmitters or only the ones that are now broadcasting Freeview|HD?

Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.

old3eyes

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#545980 16-Nov-2011 12:53

It will also mean the death of any other players in the pay TV market for good. Over the air, Sat or Internet. Sky will have the whole market tied up..

Regards,

Old3eyes

richms

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#546015 16-Nov-2011 13:40

Hope they don't get to do this, the DVB-T spectrum is too valuable to have tied up with a pay tv operation again. Sure, let them run stuff, but it should be FTA since there is already a reciever in almost every house that can get it.

Richard rich.ms

lannykaster

64 posts

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#547456 20-Nov-2011 15:23

i first read this article and thought "WOW!!", for $25 getting ten to fourteen channels.... but which ones??

I mean, basic freeview (if you arn't able to get the few aussie ones) has 15ish channels.... but the majority of those could hardly be called "essential viewing" lol.

Spyware

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#547480 20-Nov-2011 16:52

Sky will have accsss to 5 muxes including the Maori TV and Prime ones and could, if they run each using DVB-T2 H.264, run 3 o 4 HD channels on each mux. I would think that since it will be at least 3 years before this happens that their focus if they went terrestrial would be to make money by pushing a premium HD service rather than some basic service that is talked about feeding what would be SD channels on satellite.

Sky have no way to increase the capacity of the satellite service without shifting all transmissions to DVB-S2 H.264 which means replacing all SD decoders at the cost of $50M if done immediately so I imagine that the decision to add terrestrial has not actually been made at all. I would think that they need to seriously consider shifting the satellite to newer technology and providing better quality images via that route.

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mthand

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#547659 21-Nov-2011 08:16

Sky will only be interested in broadcasting HD if it makes them money. I think they are inclined just to recycle a dozen of the basic package channels for $25, and this will probably involve ripping Prime off the Kordia mux so that they can charge for it.

It always sounds like it could be promising with Sky, but I'm usually disappointed.

Spyware

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#547663 21-Nov-2011 08:31

I don't see how retransmitted low bitrate SD over terrestrial would even be acceptable in 2014, hopefully HD will be the benchmark in preparation for higher resolutions by then. Using Prime as a DVB-T example, low bitrate feed via Kordia and macroblocking clearly visible. Actually looks like bitrate into the encoders is lower than the transmitted bitrate. Compared with FOUR on MediaWorks mux Prime is vastly inferior in respect to image quality.

Given that surely it would be imperative that all sat transmissions are shifted to DVB-S2 H.264 first.

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ajw

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#547665 21-Nov-2011 08:34

Sky Television chief executive John Fellet has denied it has decided to launch a cut-down pay-television service he is dubbing ''Freeview plus'', saying a business case had not yet been made to stack up.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/5976762/Sky-still-mulling-pared-down-TV-service

sbiddle

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#547666 21-Nov-2011 08:36

This certainly isn't news - Sky have been talking about this for many years and there have been a number of historical threads discussing the issue.

What is interesting however is the business case for such a product - to me it makes absolutely no sence to split channels across terestrial and satellite and the costs of supporting two platforms would have significant associated costs.

mthand

148 posts

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#547668 21-Nov-2011 08:41

I think their problem is the cost of the decoder.

To make a premium HD broadcast business case stack up, it will need users to pay for a new decoder upfront.

If it is just going to be cheap SD retransmission, we will surely see reconditioned SD Sat decoders repurposed for dvb-t with no upfront cost

Spyware

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#547831 21-Nov-2011 13:07

No, DVB-S decoders can never be used for DVB-T, they are completely different tuners and have no HDMI out so can only be retired.

Niel

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#547861 21-Nov-2011 13:49

I think it is likely to be channels typically used by business customers (like motels). It is a pain to install multiple dishes and receivers, then distribute the signal. Just give everyone a low cost terrestial STB and a single UHF antenna. There is your business case for Sky Terrestial. TAB, Juice, CNN, Fashion, PPV, and the adult channels.

You can never have enough Volvos!

Spyware

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#547955 21-Nov-2011 16:57

Yuck, I would die before watching Fashion TV. I had dreams of Nat Geo in HD and even HD horse racing as they will have their own mux.