Quote:
Originally Posted by zantarous
The thing with the News Corp thing and Time Warner recently that really got me was, unlike here, there are many cable and satellite companies and you would think that if a broadcaster had the balls to demand a $1 increase per subscriber all the cable co and satellite companies would get together and tell said company to go take a hike and see how long they would survive without channels on air.
Having only two major players here is hindering the competition, having one of those players holding all the cards is stifling competition and hitting consumers in the pocket. Pay TV would be far cheaper if Cable and Satellite were just deliver systems and neither company owned their own stations and if they did want that then there should be strict regulation about withholding content and offering it at a fair price.
Our regulator has been quite for far too long and is probably acting far to late.
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They didn't, it was a PR stunt to justify their annual / bi-annual price rises.
---------- Post added at 10:20 ---------- Previous post was at 10:17 ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by zantarous
Seeing as the Cable infrastructure is a patchwork quilt of lots of different legacy technologies and which VM are spending huge amounts on to harmonise, I wouldn't be surprised if it was opened up in future to allow faster channel launches. However in its current state that simply isn't possible. Sky selling directly to VM customers wouldn't be any cheaper for us anyway and we would still be treated by contempt by sky without HD and red button.
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Well it's more that VM's interactive platform is closed the lack of red button however I can very much imagine HD being available if VM were to make the bandwidth available.
As far as harmonising technologies goes most of this harmonisation is irrelevant to the issue at hand. Whether Sky are billing for it and Virgin billing Sky for access or Virgin are billing for it directly to the customer it's still broadcast in the same way.
There's nothing technical stopping VM from opening up their network to Sky to sell the channels themselves - at least some of the soft core porn channels are already sold in this way I believe? I could be wrong of course but that's how I think it goes. Either way no reason why Virgin couldn't do it technically, how the signal is being transmitted isn't really relevant it's all back-end stuff.
---------- Post added at 10:22 ---------- Previous post was at 10:20 ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by ArronC07
I think it's long over due but also needs to be done on a ownership basis, along with the news papers- No one person or family should be able to exert that much control.
Don't hold your breath though as it's looking like Lapdog Cameron's already been put on a leash.
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If it were to be done to Sky there would immediately be a strong case for doing it to Virgin Media as well.