[jagsman]

I dont think Virgin will be too bothered if people start to cancel their Sports/Movies subs. Virgin do not make enough of a profit on these channels for it to make much of a difference. Remember, only about 20% of subscribers take the Sports/Movies.

As for the current TV packs, we as Virgin customers get an ever improving selection of HD channels for "no extra cost", we get ESPN's 4(soon to be 5) channels included in the price of the XL pack, and we also have the choice of taking SKY's sports and/or Movie channels amongst other premium content.

Now Virgin are giving us he chance to get some of these premium channels in HD, if you want them. Their pricing of these channels has been set by the company who owns these channels, SKY. Virgin, I think, would love to give us these channels "at no extra cost", but they are a business, so therefore they have to make money so that they can continue to trade. So they cannot buy something, then give it away for nothing.

If you want these extra channels, you will pay. If you dont want them, then you wont pay, simple as that. It's up to each individual to get what they want.

As for the pricing structure of these and any other pay TV channels, if you want to blame someone, blame SKY. Why? Well, when SKY started they started throwing money around as though it was going out of fashion. You only have to look at what they pay for Premiershit football. They are paying roughly £350m a season. Now everyone knows that there is no other company who would be able to come close to offering that amount of money, so they could quite easily have offered £250m or even £200m, and they would still have got the gig. Just to prove this point, when the OFCOM rulings came out, the FA, Premier League, RFU, ECB, PDC and a few others were all ******** bricks, because they all rely on SKY's over-generous offers to survive.

The one thing that I cannot agree with is this "per box" ********. We all pay to get the Cable/Satellite installed, then we pay for whatever box we want, then we pay for whatever content we want. Having to pay extra for the same content on an extra box is tantamount to theft. Put it like this, what would people say if the Govt decided that you had to pay a license fee for each TV in your home. This is the one thing that OFCOM should have kicked into touch as soon as SKY started it. But its too late now, because they know that if they upset SKY too much, football, cricket, rugby and darts would collapse under the weight of debt, when SKY said "we're off".

Anyway back on topic.
Film4 HD tomorrow, yeehaa