Quote:
Originally Posted by virginruinedntl
thank god for ofcom forcing sky to give virgin hd. I doubt they will give virgin the 1920x1080i feed though, they will probably only give 1440x1080i that they show themselves. bbchd on virgin is 1920x1080i btw. I reckon sky will ask for crazy prices now from virgin and virgin say its too high then we will have to wait for ofcom to set a good price.
maybe we might get sky sports hd 1-3  |
If you read the review ofcom aren't at all happy with sky's wholesale pricing. Essentially on the premium channels VM makes a loss on each customer that takes them up.
It seems like Ofcom are ready to step in and set the pricing now, there's a page in there that shows the cost-plus price of the channel (essentially cost + reasonable markup), the price sky charge for them, and a range of prices ofcom considers reasonable, and there's a huge difference (up to 20%) between what they charge now and what ofcom thinks they should charge.
I really am hoping that they follow through with this, bringing down the wholesale cost of the channels, and forcing them to wholesale HD at £4.00-6.39/month per sub, would really turn things round for VM (as long as VM can put all the channels on) not just by bringing the service in line with Sky, but reducing their costs and increasing their margins to the level where expansion and improvement would be extremely viable.
Infact, I'd go as far as to say that if they did then there would be no reason at all to choose sky over VM, and VM would have a significant market advantage.
One of the interesting things from reading the review is with the movie channels though, Sky have the subscription vod rights to all the major movie studios (as those rights are tied in with the linear channel rights) this means that they can offer a subscription on demand service for movies... but they obviously don't have the TV platform to do it and only offer a small online service. Ofcom are going to look in if those rights are always going to be tied to the linear rights, or if the movie studios are going to unbundle them.
If they are unbundled, or ofcom force sky to wholesale them as well if the studios wont, then VM could offer an subscribed movies on demand service, offering a massive back catalogue of films from all the major studios. That would put VM firmly ahead of Sky. Who would want movie channels that repeat the same films 10 times a week, when you could subscribe to an on demand service that offers a massive library to choose from?
All of this is exactly why Sky are anti-competative, simply because they cannot compete on a level playing field, they have an inherent disadvantage with their platform, it's great for linear tv, but when you want interactive services and next generation tv services like VOD, it's nowhere to be seen.