Spark adds Formula 1 to sports line-up

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#2120771 6-Nov-2018 10:06

Ill throw this out there

Can Sky and Spark be frenemies? They are going after the sports viewers, and ultimately there will be two sports services. Lucky people have their sports on the one service, most of us it will be split. They wont want me choosing just one service, as one of them will lose a sub, they may compete, but also work together to help subside me into having both services.

Benoire

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#2120774 6-Nov-2018 10:09

I'm not sure if they can be. BEin was fine with Sky 'reselling' EPL as it got them market share given their failure with the Australasia market f'up, but I personally think Spark is trying to take on Sky... They all want exclusives and 'win'. If they can be friends then its all good, but the consumer will lose out no matter what if you want to watch more than a few things.

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#2120776 6-Nov-2018 10:11

tdgeek:

Can Sky and Spark be frenemies? They are going after the sports viewers, and ultimately there will be two sports services. Lucky people have their sports on the one service, most of us it will be split. They wont want me choosing just one service, as one of them will lose a sub, they may compete, but also work together to help subside me into having both services.

Like how Spark offer their broadband customers Fan Pass for $30 per month? The cheapest you can get it elsewhere is nearly twice that price.

tdgeek

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#2120781 6-Nov-2018 10:19

stinger:

tdgeek:

Can Sky and Spark be frenemies? They are going after the sports viewers, and ultimately there will be two sports services. Lucky people have their sports on the one service, most of us it will be split. They wont want me choosing just one service, as one of them will lose a sub, they may compete, but also work together to help subside me into having both services.

Like how Spark offer their broadband customers Fan Pass for $30 per month? The cheapest you can get it elsewhere is nearly twice that price.

Similar

I have Sky, so I pay $100 a month, ok with that. You can assume I would pay $100 per month for Sky and Spark, maybe a tickle more. If either can give me a deal as I have both services, that may keep the price doable. Especially if the so called full Sky app saves me $20 per month giving back the MySky

There are a fixed number of sports viewers that have Sky Sport. Both parties would like to have all of them, rather than split most of them up. Better to have 100% of them at a discount than 50% of them at full price

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#2120785 6-Nov-2018 10:26

I have SKY and am happy with it.

What Spark has isn't enough to make me want to pay them anything as of yet.

Also I find the quality of picture better on SKY but yet SKY is far from having the best picture you can get.

Interesting thing I think about is if SKY was to get into bed with FOXTEL as they are starting to broadcast somethings in 4K (the cricket on Sunday was one).

c0ld

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#2120889 6-Nov-2018 14:42

I find live sport quality on Sky Go (using a web browser on PC hooked up to the TV) to be absolutely terrible compared to even free offerings you can find on sites elsewhere - I'd say it generally looks at best 360 resolution (I happily stream 4K Netflix so it's not my connection / PC hardware limitations).

As Sky Go is secondary to their main TV service through the decoder whereas Spark will be using online as their primary delivery method, would we at a guess be more likely to see something akin to live 1080p streaming?

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Talkiet

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#2120891 6-Nov-2018 14:44

c0ld:

I find live sport quality on Sky Go (using a web browser on PC hooked up to the TV) to be absolutely terrible compared to even free offerings you can find on sites elsewhere - I'd say it generally looks at best 360 resolution (I happily stream 4K Netflix so it's not my connection / PC hardware limitations).

As Sky Go is secondary to their main TV service through the decoder whereas Spark will be using online as their primary delivery method, would we at a guess be more likely to see something akin to live 1080p streaming?

Yes. It'll be way way better than SkyGo.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

Benoire

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#2120896 6-Nov-2018 14:51

Will it be natively on Android TV? I'd be upset if a) it was expensive and b) requiring a chromecast to make it work. I also hope that the fast motion will be better than BEin and what PLP was; PLP was very bad on fast panning.

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#2120897 6-Nov-2018 14:54

Benoire:

Will it be natively on Android TV? I'd be upset if a) it was expensive and b) requiring a chromecast to make it work. I also hope that the fast motion will be better than BEin and what PLP was; PLP was very bad on fast panning.

I'm not allowed to give out specifics but I have seen examples of the stream quality (encoder profile / resolution / bitrates) with my own eyes and it's fantastic... (Test video was not F1 but was a sport with lots of panning involved)

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

Benoire

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#2120899 6-Nov-2018 14:58

Ok, I'm still going to not feel entirely positive about this until I know more specifics, such as platform, ability to FFW through the proceeding race buildup if I want to and actually find the start, picture quality and encoder performance etc.

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#2120900 6-Nov-2018 15:00

Benoire:

Ok, I'm still going to not feel entirely positive about this until I know more specifics, such as platform, ability to FFW through the proceeding race buildup if I want to and actually find the start, picture quality and encoder performance etc.

Understandable. I'm afraid you'll have to wait for the official announcements. I can't say any more about the platform etc in my unofficial capacity.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

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#2120913 6-Nov-2018 15:44

Talkiet:

Benoire:

Will it be natively on Android TV? I'd be upset if a) it was expensive and b) requiring a chromecast to make it work. I also hope that the fast motion will be better than BEin and what PLP was; PLP was very bad on fast panning.

I'm not allowed to give out specifics but I have seen examples of the stream quality (encoder profile / resolution / bitrates) with my own eyes and it's fantastic... (Test video was not F1 but was a sport with lots of panning involved)

Cheers - N

Forgive me for my lack of in depth knowledge but...

How was it tested? What looks good on one connection can look bad on another even taking into account cleaning up things that can affect performance.

Talkiet

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#2120935 6-Nov-2018 16:04

Jas777:

Talkiet:

Benoire:

Will it be natively on Android TV? I'd be upset if a) it was expensive and b) requiring a chromecast to make it work. I also hope that the fast motion will be better than BEin and what PLP was; PLP was very bad on fast panning.

I'm not allowed to give out specifics but I have seen examples of the stream quality (encoder profile / resolution / bitrates) with my own eyes and it's fantastic... (Test video was not F1 but was a sport with lots of panning involved)

Cheers - N

Forgive me for my lack of in depth knowledge but...

How was it tested? What looks good on one connection can look bad on another even taking into account cleaning up things that can affect performance.

Sorry, as I said I'm not able to give out specifics. I will say I have pretty high standards... I was making sure my VT20 plasma was really being kicked into 24p to watch movies many years ago and turn of frame interpolation for sports etc...

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

everettpsycho

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#2121048 6-Nov-2018 18:47

tdgeek:
Ill throw this out there

Can Sky and Spark be frenemies? They are going after the sports viewers, and ultimately there will be two sports services. Lucky people have their sports on the one service, most of us it will be split. They wont want me choosing just one service, as one of them will lose a sub, they may compete, but also work together to help subside me into having both services.

BT in the UK got a great arrangement with sky there when they went down this path. They somehow got their sport channels on to sky, if you were a BT broadband customer you could give them your sky details and it got unlocked on your sky box for free,. If you weren't a BT customer you could pay sky £10 a month.

They also then managed to launch their own TV service where it was pretty much a freeview box with IPTV channels added to the EPG for a monthly subscription, that included some sky only channels.

Overall it worked really well, it wasn't totally reliant on their old copper network and getting bt broadband and sky TV want much more expensive than getting sky TV with broadband bundled in so it drove a fair few customers BT's way

ockel

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#2121114 6-Nov-2018 19:55

everettpsycho:
tdgeek:

Ill throw this out there

Can Sky and Spark be frenemies? They are going after the sports viewers, and ultimately there will be two sports services. Lucky people have their sports on the one service, most of us it will be split. They wont want me choosing just one service, as one of them will lose a sub, they may compete, but also work together to help subside me into having both services.

BT in the UK got a great arrangement with sky there when they went down this path. They somehow got their sport channels on to sky, if you were a BT broadband customer you could give them your sky details and it got unlocked on your sky box for free,. If you weren't a BT customer you could pay sky £10 a month.

They also then managed to launch their own TV service where it was pretty much a freeview box with IPTV channels added to the EPG for a monthly subscription, that included some sky only channels.

Overall it worked really well, it wasn't totally reliant on their old copper network and getting bt broadband and sky TV want much more expensive than getting sky TV with broadband bundled in so it drove a fair few customers BT's way

Really? I was under the impression that if you werent a BT customer and you wanted BT Sports on your Sky box it cost GBP28/mth. Can you elaborate whether it was the old ESPN content that you could get on Sky for GBP10/mth? And when did the price change to GBP28/mth and why?

What were the Sky only channels that were included in the BT IPTV offering?

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