The future of pay-television

[denphone]

Originally Posted by Chris

Linear broadcast TV creates the market for VOD services.

In a commercial environment, either subscriptions, or advertising, or both, pays for the content to be created. The subscription/advertising money is only available because the linear distribution model guarantees a sufficiently large audience. Having created the content in the first place, the linear broadcasts also act as a massive advertisement for the existence of that same content on VOd services.

Do not underestimate the passivity of a British TV audience at 8 or 9 pm on a weekday evening. The overwhelming majority of us still pick from the choices that involve least effort, namely the linear terrestrial public service channels. This is the case across all homes, even those that have access to subscription and VOD services.

Yes l have to agree with you on this and the so called death of Linear TV has been wildly exaggerated by certain people.

[HDFootyMan]

Xbox Live have been offering 1080p/5.1 streaming for eons now (for around 5Mb broadband connections). Granted, the bitrates are nowhere near Blu-Ray, but still.

There will always be room for linear TV, especially for 'event' TV such as major sports games, royal weddings and dare I say it, X-Factor.

[Arthurgray50@blu]

To me the cost of the pay tv is far to expensive, what we have to have is several companies that do the same product.

At the moment l pay nearly £80.00 per month for Sky and £65.00 for VM, there other options but the services they provide are not good.

In this climate at the moment Sky have frozen there prices till 2012, but that l think is because people would move to VM. When you think that purses are now being tightened l feel that the future of pay tv is poor, as people no longer have the money.

You have to be competitive, but l think Sky are wiping the door, and there are no plans to revise pricing. At the moment we have Freesat, Freeview, BT Vision and a new one soon Real Digital, but in about two years who will still be around, that's anyone's guess.

Originally Posted by Arthurgray50@blu

To me the cost of the pay tv is far to expensive, what we have to have is several companies that do the same product.

At the moment l pay nearly £80.00 per month for Sky and £65.00 for VM, there other options but the services they provide are not good.

In this climate at the moment Sky have frozen there prices till 2012, but that l think is because people would move to VM. When you think that purses are now being tightened l feel that the future of pay tv is poor, as people no longer have the money.

You have to be competitive, but l think Sky are wiping the door, and there are no plans to revise pricing. At the moment we have Freesat, Freeview, BT Vision and a new one soon Real Digital, but in about two years who will still be around, that's anyone's guess.

it's too expensive, and you pay £145 per month, or £1,740 per year - there is a very simple solution....

£145 per month on TV!

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by HDFootyMan

There will always be room for linear TV, especially for 'event' TV such as major sports games, royal weddings and dare I say it, X-Factor.

There's another reason why there will always be room for linear TV. Connection speeds. On Demand needs a fair amount of bandwidth to view. On cable, that's no problem. The trouble is, only around half of the country has been cabled. "You can get VOD on ADSL or Fibre", I hear you cry. Yes, you can. However, you have to live within a few miles of your exchange for ADSL to be viable (a lot of people don't, and only get a meg or two). Fibre probably won't be an option in a lot of areas (particulary rural areas ) because no one is likely to want to finance it, at least not without government help, and the government have only pledged a fraction of the investment needed.

[OLD BOY]

Originally Posted by Stuart

The trouble is, only around half of the country has been cabled.

Yes, but that will change. VM are looking to expand across the country, using BT cables, telegraph poles, etc. VM expansion will occur quicker than most people realise, I think.

[muppetman11]

But he now feels that the supposed "death of the TV" has proved a misnomer, as linear viewing has grown to record levels and most on-demand consumption is for catching up on the live TV schedule

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/digitalt...ed-decade.html