Why Sky should put Prime on Freeview

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Snowflake

#205343 4-Apr-2009 23:20

Behodar:
nate: Sky has realised there is a group of subscribers who love Prime and would ditch their monthly subscription if Prime was available for free. By locking Prime into Sky only, they retain this customer base.

Prime IS (almost) available for free digitally. You can pay Sky a one-off fee of $155 and they'll give you a dish and decoder with Prime. You can then hook a Freeview receiver up to the same dish and get all the channels there too :)

actually thats not true. they only do this if you are in an area where UHF reception is poor. I tried this approach, and failed (i already had my own dish too).

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old3eyes

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#205361 5-Apr-2009 08:23

amphibem: In regards to satellite TV:

2. TVNZ in my opinion do not have the moral authority to withhold channels, as it is an SOE and hence owned by the taxpayers. People with Sky are taxpayers and have a right to the full offerings of TVNZ, especially 6&7 which are fully NZ On Air funded.

I disagree. Why should the tax payer help to increase Murdocks bottom line when he won't put Prime on Freeview??

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Behodar

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#205362 5-Apr-2009 08:32

Regs: actually thats not true. they only do this if you are in an area where UHF reception is poor. I tried this approach, and failed (i already had my own dish too).

Interesting, they didn't even mention UHF when I called up and asked for it, however the guy I was talking to has family here in Whakatane and maybe knew that I was in a spot with no UHF anyway (he did ask which side of the hill I was on).

tstone

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#205490 6-Apr-2009 10:05

amphibem: In regards to satellite TV:

2. TVNZ in my opinion do not have the moral authority to withhold channels, as it is an SOE and hence owned by the taxpayers. People with Sky are taxpayers and have a right to the full offerings of TVNZ, especially 6&7 which are fully NZ On Air funded.

I agree totally and this was my argument over in the Sky forums on Geekzone but there are contributors here who don't understand this argument and believe that being fair to taxpayers is subsidising Sky. In reality it is a matter of personal choice if you get Sky or not.
Maybe we should get a tax refund becasue we were denied having TVNZ 6 and TVNZ 7 on Sky?

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Snowflake

#205673 7-Apr-2009 02:50

tstone:
amphibem: In regards to satellite TV:

2. TVNZ in my opinion do not have the moral authority to withhold channels, as it is an SOE and hence owned by the taxpayers. People with Sky are taxpayers and have a right to the full offerings of TVNZ, especially 6&7 which are fully NZ On Air funded.

I agree totally and this was my argument over in the Sky forums on Geekzone but there are contributors here who don't understand this argument and believe that being fair to taxpayers is subsidising Sky. In reality it is a matter of personal choice if you get Sky or not.
Maybe we should get a tax refund becasue we were denied having TVNZ 6 and TVNZ 7 on Sky?

you're not being deined tvnz6 and tvnz7 by not having those channels on sky. you would not have been in any different a position to anyone else in the country in that you would have needed to go and buy a freeview box (sat or uhf) to get them. just because you would have had to have two boxes doesnt mean that the services would have been 'withheld'...

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allan

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#205682 7-Apr-2009 08:27

But you are going to get TVNZ 6 & 7 on Sky.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/2291754/Sky-customers-to-get-TVNZ6-7

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tstone

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#205684 7-Apr-2009 08:43

Yes, the problem is solved now. Luckily I wasn't forced to pay my taxes for not receiving TVNZ 6 and TVNZ 7 AND buying an additional STB! Previous to the announcement referred to above that was going to be the ridiculous solution, now it isn't.

RockResearch

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#205685 7-Apr-2009 08:52

I suspect that this will never happen (while I would like it to). Prime is now just another 'Sky' channel. Expecting Sky to put Prime onto Freeview is the same as expecting them to put the Documentary channel (or insert any other Sky channel) onto Freeview.
I have just cancelled my Sky sub and notice that I can still receive tv 1 & 2, Stratos and a few other channels via the STB, but Prime requires a Sky sub so cannot be accessed.

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#205687 7-Apr-2009 09:09

tstone: Yes, the problem is solved now. Luckily I wasn't forced to pay my taxes for not receiving TVNZ 6 and TVNZ 7 AND buying an additional STB! Previous to the announcement referred to above that was going to be the ridiculous solution, now it isn't.

While I can see your point you're also agueing that double dipping by a Pay TV provider is OK.

Sky Digital's original big selling point was the originally the availability of FTA channels. It wasn't the fact you could get Sky channels nationwide - it was the fact you could get TV1 and TV2 and people were rushing to get Sky Digital installed just so they could get FTA channels on Sky. Rural uptake in particular was huge.

Sky were effectively making lots of money out of providing TV1 and TV2 and my understanding is that TVNZ were never paid as part of this arrangeent. You can argue that they shouldn't be paid - afterall they're a publically owned network but is it fair that a private company makes money out of a state funded organisation? Most people would say no.

Sky and TVNZ were bitter enemies with plenty of ongoing issues that caused the bitterness including the Avalon uplink saga. Sky need to be able to offer FTA channels as part of it's package. The question really is whether they should be paying for access to these or not.

timestyles

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#205705 7-Apr-2009 10:19

I'm not sure if Prime TV has ever made a profit, so Sky probably decided to buy it to use it as a 'loss leader' so people would decide to join up with Sky to get Prime on digital. In that case, it seems fair to prevent people watching it on Freeview.

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#205709 7-Apr-2009 10:56

They bought it so that they could get rights to certain programming.

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Snowflake

#205710 7-Apr-2009 11:02

sbiddle:
tstone: Yes, the problem is solved now. Luckily I wasn't forced to pay my taxes for not receiving TVNZ 6 and TVNZ 7 AND buying an additional STB! Previous to the announcement referred to above that was going to be the ridiculous solution, now it isn't.

While I can see your point you're also agueing that double dipping by a Pay TV provider is OK.

i cant really see this as valid point... everyone who doesnt have sky has to buy a STB for freeview, so why should it be any different for SKY subscribers? SKY is a closed system, only available to their subscribers and they shouldnt get automatic rights to rebroadcast anything they like through this system. Perhaps the subscibers shouldnt be paying directly, may SKY should have had to pay TVNZ for the rights to provide the channels on behalf of their subscribers (perhaps they did).

I can see a valid reason for the inclusion from the point of view of TVNZ maximising their advertising revenue from these channels. If sky subscribers dont get them and dont buy an etra box then the ad's would go unwatched. Although i'm not sure that advertising spots demand much of a premium on these channels anyway.

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grolschie

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#205753 7-Apr-2009 14:54

To me it seems such a waste to broadcast the same channel/s on both platforms. Couldn't some arrangement be made to allowing tuning into each others transponder, thus saving bandwidth? Just my $0.02.

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#205762 7-Apr-2009 15:26

grolschie:

To me it seems such a waste to broadcast the same channel/s on both platforms. Couldn't some arrangement be made to allowing tuning into each others transponder, thus saving bandwidth? Just my $0.02.

I am sure there could... if TVNZ and Sky did not hate each other with a vengence.

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Snowflake

#205859 7-Apr-2009 20:33

Nety:
grolschie:

To me it seems such a waste to broadcast the same channel/s on both platforms. Couldn't some arrangement be made to allowing tuning into each others transponder, thus saving bandwidth? Just my $0.02.

I am sure there could... if TVNZ and Sky did not hate each other with a vengence.

depends if SKY want to broadcast them as HD or not. Freeview is only broadcasting SD on satellite...

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