Originally Posted by GuestUK (Post 34242730)

The difficulty here is whether something is significant is subjective rather than objective. A person who never watches Sky One or Sky News would consider their loss insignificant, whereas a person who watches nothing but would consider it very significant. It's something which has to be considered on a personal basis, rather than something you can summarise as not being 'significant changes' for anyone.

It also depends on the service and package people have - the more channels they have, the less significant a reduction it perhaps is. For those with very few channels of which Sky One and Sky News were part of, it is more significant. For example, on analogue for me, losing Sky One and Sky News has been quite significant because there are now only a couple of channels remaining (I know, my fault for not being digital, but in my case I would argue it was a significant loss - especially considering the channel number of Sky One was 7, after bbc, itv, channel four, five and itv2)

Originally Posted by arcamalpha2004 (Post 34242708)

The end of the day the contract is a piece of paper, not the bible as some on here would have believed.
People who want to leave any company should know that a contract can be contested.
You cannot be held to a contract if you think that contract is unfair.
In my opinion VM did make significant changes to their package, therefore if they do not let people out of the contract, which in fairness they are doing, then they can be rightly taken to task, as can any company.

Originally Posted by AndyCambs (Post 34242772)

And talking of unfair contract terms - there's the contract between Sky and Virgin for the Virgin TV Channels:

http://pressoffice.virginmedia.com/p...203&highlight=

Originally Posted by foreverwar (Post 34242775)

Does that mean that VM can cancel their contract with Sky?

That looks like a "significant change" to me - Sky should be taken to task.

Originally Posted by James Murdoch

Our Sky Basics deal was originally due to expire simultaneously with the Flextech deal. But they asked us if we would be willing to extend that deal by three months - we did not understand it at the time. But we did it - losing some money - because we figured they had just done the merger and had not got their act together. But maybe it was because they wanted it to come up right after their relaunch.

Originally Posted by GuestUK (Post 34242796)

Edit: Also of interest - seems Sky offered Virgin the ability to retail their channels themselves with full control and profits, although Virgin turned it down.

Originally Posted by Downloads (Post 34242813)

I don't blame them either, NTL nearly went completely under after spending a tonne of money in laying cable which is a superior technology. Getting access to satellite in return is hardly a fair exchange.

Originally Posted by Downloads (Post 34242813)

I don't blame them either, NTL nearly went completely under after spending a tonne of money in laying cable which is a superior technology. Getting access to satellite in return is hardly a fair exchange.

Originally Posted by AndyCambs (Post 34242772)

And talking of unfair contract terms - there's the contract between Sky and Virgin for the Virgin TV Channels:

http://pressoffice.virginmedia.com/p...203&highlight=

Originally Posted by GuestUK (Post 34242822)

I can see what you are saying, I think, unless I misunderstood though, it would be something more in addition rather than exchange? Virgin gains access to satellite, while still having (if they wanted - and they do) full control over its cable network?

Originally Posted by Stuart C (Post 34242820)

Virgin could get into satellite relatively easily anyway. Sky don't own the satellite, they just rent transponders on it. Anyone (with enough cash and an uplink facility) can approach SES (who do own Astra).