Thread: Where Now For UK Cable?
View Single Post
Old 13-05-2006, 13:34   #58
Rillington
Inactive
 
Join Date: Jan 2004
Services: Virgin Media, DAB
Posts: 1,157
Rillington has entered a golden reputation eraRillington has entered a golden reputation eraRillington has entered a golden reputation eraRillington has entered a golden reputation eraRillington has entered a golden reputation eraRillington has entered a golden reputation eraRillington has entered a golden reputation eraRillington has entered a golden reputation eraRillington has entered a golden reputation eraRillington has entered a golden reputation eraRillington has entered a golden reputation era
Re: Where Now For UK Cable?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stuart C
Actually, that's not true. Not all content on VOD is charged, and Sky's broadband is only free if you take movies or sports channels.

Sky have several advantages over UK Cable, which allow them to innovate more easily.
  1. They have the backing of one of (if not the) largest multimedia corporation on the planet. News Corp.
  2. They have less hardware/software to upgrade. Even ignoring the STBs, to launch a new service, Sky may have to upgrade a few uplink sites (if any) and their broadcast facilities. UK Cable may have hundreds of sites to update (all the head ends need upgrading for VOD for example). It's also worth noting that if the service requires extra hardware on the STB (such as a hard drive), the Cable Co's have hundreds of STBs to replace. Sky tend to require that the user buy their own. Admittedly, UK Cable could also require this, and save themselves a whole lot of money, but they don't seem willing.
  3. Satellite is (by definition) a relatively cheap way to reach millions of viewers (all you need is some comms hardware and a transponder or two on a satellite). Cable has a few downlink sites, hundreds of head ends, thousands of street cabinets and tens of thousands of miles of cable.
I accept those three points. However, what people see is the prodct and not the stuff you describe. What I see is that I would pay £50 per month for the Sky Sports digital package if I allowed ntl to charge me that much whereas for the same package on Sky I would pay less than £40, get Sky+ for free, have access to Sky Sports VOD via my broadband connection, have all the Sky Sports interactive stuff and be able to watch more than double the numebr of channels whilst paying 25% less than ntl charge me and given that ntl is boudn to charge for its PVR then I'd be paying £60 per month compared to £35 pm on Sky and still not get all those extra channels and the sports VOD stuff despite paying almost double.

As for the VOD, I accept that the catch-up is not a chargeable add-on but I believe that the programmes offered are very small in number and change meaning that often you would not be able to watch a series on VOD because the final episodes would not be available.
Rillington is offline   Reply With Quote