General : Virgin Media & UKTV+ITV Channels

[OLD BOY]

Originally Posted by tvtimes

You missed my point, OB . I meant what was the point in not allowing customers out of contract, aggravating them even further, when VM as a company would have been aware a price rise was coming soon and those upset customers could leave anyway. It just made the situation worse and Virgin Media wouldn't have known at that immediate time the channels would definitely come back and they would eventually get a better deal.

Sorry, yes, I see what you meant.

Still, a contract is a contract, I suppose, and some of those refused may later decide to stay.

I agree that some would be upset, though.

---------- Post added at 17:37 ---------- Previous post was at 17:33 ----------

Originally Posted by tvtimes

Correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't the BBC been selling off their archive content to the likes of Netflix? How can the BBC give commitments to VM when they have sold off a lot of on-demand rights? Haven't the BBC made such promises before when they negotiated previously and they never came to fruition?

It depends whether Netflix have been given exclusive rights, and if each deal with Netflix is separate, then there is scope to negotiate at least future releases with VM as well as Netflix.

If exclusive rights have not been given, there's no problem as far as I can see.

[tvtimes]

Originally Posted by OLD BOY

Sorry, yes, I see what you meant.

Still, a contract is a contract, I suppose, and some of those refused may later decide to stay.

I agree that some would be upset, though.

---------- Post added at 17:37 ---------- Previous post was at 17:33 ----------



It depends whether Netflix have been given exclusive rights, and if each deal with Netflix is separate, then there is scope to negotiate at least future releases with VM as well as Netflix.

If exclusive rights have not been given, there's no problem as far as I can see.

Not a problem I could have made my point clearer.

I am probably wrong, I assumed that it would be exclusive because the usual case with TV rights is one company gets on-demand rights exclusively and one gets the FTA rights.
I don't know what the deal with Netflix entails and whether they have rights to all their back catalogue or some.
I will say that Netflix are usually very shrewd and I would assume they would have gotten whatever rights they have got exclusive to them.

[Chloé Palmas]

Originally Posted by denphone

It has UK TV Play on there as a app which has catch up and on demand content.

I dunno if you are actually able to remember this but back in the day, UK TV Play actually used to be a TV network, as part of the UK TV set. Caused so much of a headache when it came to their overall umbrella system that they changed the name of their network to "play UK".


What fun if they had apps back then to add into the mix, too.

[RichardCoulter]

Originally Posted by OLD BOY

What were the old and new carriage costs, then, Richard? They haven't made that public as far as I am aware, so you cannot say the nil carriage costs for three weeks or so will not cover the discounts and compensation payments. It's just a finger in the air argument.

As far as your second paragraph is concerned, when did you start setting the rules? You are plugging this tired old argument to death, and yet we will all see that this will be a distant memory for most of us before too long. Surely there is a limit, even for you, on the number of different ways you can make this point.

With regard to the UKTV HD situation, yes, I stand corrected in that Gold HD was the only one withheld previously. I was mistakenly counting Drama, which unfortunately is not available in HD, although I can't think why. It would make more sense if it was Drama rather than Gold, but there you go.

---------- Post added at 17:10 ---------- Previous post was at 17:06 ----------



1. Gold HD
2. More 'On demand'.
3. A commitment from the BBC to commence negotiations on the BBC archives which they previously refused.
Possibly, 4. A reduction in cost, which would have reduced the size of the price hike.

I think all this, together with the discounts and compensation payments (and of course the return of the UKTV channels) as well as those 'replacement channels', have satisfied most.

What rules are you talking about? Some of your comments are becoming more and more bizarre.

It's not your place to try and inhibit others from expressing their opinion with the use of sneery and sanctimonious remarks as you appear to be increasingly doing. I think that this will have an affect on VM well into the future because some people have now lost faith in VM to be able to continue providing the channels that they signed up for and you don't. It's as simple as that and whose opinion is correct will become clear when the company results are published.

If a customer is now getting an open ended discount of pounds per month, it's bound to cost more in lost revenue than what they saved by not having to provide that customsr the UKTV channels for 2/3 weeks at a cost of pennies per channel per week. Multiply this many times and there you have your answer.

Originally Posted by RichardCoulter

What rules are you talking about? Some of your comments are becoming more and more bizarre.

It's not your place to try and inhibit others from expressing their opinion with the use of sneery and sanctimonious remarks as you appear to be increasingly doing.. I think that this will have an affect on VM well into the future because some people have now lost faith in VM to be able to continue providing the channels that they signed up for and you don't. It's as simple as that and whose opinion is correct will become clear when the company results are published.

If a customer is now getting an open ended discount of pounds per month, it's bound to cost more in lost revenue than what they saved by not having to provide that customsr the UKTV channels for 2/3 weeks at a cost of pennies per channel per week. Multiply this many times and there you have your answer.

You may wish to check your self-awareness levels = you are literally doing what you state OB is doing.

[RichardCoulter]

Originally Posted by Hugh

You may wish to check your self-awareness levels = you are literally doing what you state OB is doing.

Indeed, it's easy to fall into the trap of fighting fire with fire.

Bizarre? What do you mean?

[Chloé Palmas]

Originally Posted by Inactive Digital

So Virgin claims the BBC is witholding on demand, and UKTV says the fallout is because Virgin is cutting the amount it's willing to pay them. Where does the truth lie? Somewhere in the middle is my guess.

The 2016 BBC carriage deal with UKTV included 10,000 hours of on demand content, including Only Fools and Horses (see here). OFAH is BBC content of the type Virgin says UKTV can't provide. So at some point in the past two years, UKTV seems to have lost the rights to on demand BBC archive programmes. If the BBC gave UKTV no option to renew the on demand rights, I can see why Virgin would be upset with the BBC.
That to me would not be a failure on Virgin's side and if they are getting less from UKTV, why wouldn't they expect to pay less?

Of course, the same could be said for the customers too!

I think that the BBC / on Demand content has been dropping everywhere / for everyone actually, not just a VM thing. They shouldn't have taken it quite so personally. Even though Versailes came to an end, the Beeb didn't even let it stay on catch up beyond a week (as nobody picked up the third series) and even though Gold is running Dad's Army from the start the BBC still has not located the missing episodes. That really is BBC based, not singling out VM IMO. (Even UKTV is suffering).

[Mythica]

Originally Posted by RichardCoulter

What rules are you talking about? Some of your comments are becoming more and more bizarre.

It's not your place to try and inhibit others from expressing their opinion with the use of sneery and sanctimonious remarks as you appear to be increasingly doing. I think that this will have an affect on VM well into the future because some people have now lost faith in VM to be able to continue providing the channels that they signed up for and you don't. It's as simple as that and whose opinion is correct will become clear when the company results are published.

If a customer is now getting an open ended discount of pounds per month, it's bound to cost more in lost revenue than what they saved by not having to provide that customsr the UKTV channels for 2/3 weeks at a cost of pennies per channel per week. Multiply this many times and there you have your answer.

Which is exactly what you do on these forums.

[Chloé Palmas]

Originally Posted by johnathome

Once you create a sky account there's a forum on the sky.com site.

Honestly it never is needed usually - Sky never have the rate of screw ups that other major providers do.

Yeah they have their own dedicated forums but it is rather redundant and once issues arise they get resolved pretty fast.

Like Den said though, for most major TV news, DS is pretty good.

I have had Sky in one way or another all my adult life and have never used their only help system. Never needed to.

Sure things go wrong from time to time but if need be, their engineers fix it and from time to time it is due to weather (signal) or third party (BT / open reach etc).

[Stephen]

Enough.

Everyone just calm down and get back on topic

[Gavin-D]

GOLD is going into Sir David Jason overdrive again as all of September will be dedicated to some of the comedies he's starred in



Expect to see the same episodes of Only fools repeated numerous times a week like last year

[SnoopZ]

Did Gold HD ever turn up as i can't find it, and the usual 124 channel still looks SD?

[SonicMaster]

Originally Posted by SnoopZ

Did Gold HD ever turn up as i can't find it, and the usual 124 channel still looks SD?

Not until mid September.

[RichardCoulter]

Yup, as expected VM are making technical behind the scenes changes before adding Gold HD.

[jfman]

There’s plenty of space given they can now squeeze 7 HD channels per frequency (among the plenty of other space available). It’s far more likely the delay is in some way contractual.

As new HD versions of less popular channels have came online it certainly indicates the issue isn’t capacity.