I would imagine the great deal will be being made on their own services (the broadband and phone line) where they are able to trim their margins. There will be no bargaining on the Sky Sports/Movies side of things. It is likely you will still be paying full price for these, but this is absorbed by reducing the cost of the broadband and landline services within the bundle
As for SVoD, yeah I remember that a good while back on Digital Spy. Granted it was never an official press release from NTL, someone just happened to stumble upon it, because it was removed shortly after.
Only time will tell I suppose