Quote:
Originally posted by SMHarman
I think you are correct in that BT/NTL do the final transmission to the sat. However that is part of the network infrastructure.
Sky do all the encoding etc of the transmissions to NTL/BT for them to pass onto the uplink. That has had some pretty heavy investment I imagine.
|
It's true, Sky have made a huge investment (in fact, they were running at a huge loss for the first few years, and I think, even now are heavily subsidised by other companies in the Murdoch empire).
But, as far as I am aware, Sky only encode their own channels. Having said that, again as far as I am aware, NTL don't encode any.
It is still considerably cheaper for Sky to maintain and improve their services. I think this is partly due to the huge costs of network maintenance, and partly due to the fact the NTL still own all the STBs on their networks (which will need upgrading from time to time).
Sky don't have this problem. I think the bulk of their boxes are owned by the customer, so the customer has to pay to upgrade their box.
Sky are also backed by one of the largest companies of any description in the world (News Corp), so can afford to run at a loss for a while..