Hard News: The future: be careful what you wish for
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anth,
I never watch any Sky content. I will concede that if I had a subscription I'd probably find something else to watch.
Sky Basic + Soho = $57/month. I don't know how easy it is to quit and rejoin so the 10 episodes for a season could require being subscribed from anything from 3-12 months, putting the cost between $171-684/season or $17-68/episode.
Compare with box set at around $60/season. It means waiting but also having a set of discs to keep. Hiring each of five discs will cost much less than that. It has been mentioned that iTunes would be $35/season.
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Dylan - Netflix or Hulu Plus? About to go that way myself - AD etc on Netflix suggests its better, does Hulu really get any worthy tv shows that Netflix don't?
Also, amazing timing from Slingshot to announce a "global service" on their Internet plans on the same day - i.e. ISP provided VPN to let you watch US based geoblocked content without faffing about with VPN settings yourself
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Re: the Sunday replay and Monday highlights show, it’s worth noting that the EPL schedule changes up a lot around the Christmas / New Year’s period with games being held midweek and a general plethora of matches occurring (i.e. 2 ‘rounds’ within one week) .. presumably TVNZ and Coliseum will manage this bridge as they cross it
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Gareth - that is amazing news about Slingshot...SKY TV shares will probably drop another 100million when the gamlers at the stock exchange realise the cat's really out of the bag. Other providers will follow shortly...wicked
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Check out Slingshot's marketing - bizzaro!
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Dylan Reeve, in reply to
In case you’re not aware, you can receive FreeView via satellite using your Sky dish. You only need a decoder.
I'm aware... But DVB-S Freeview is shit. Poor(er) quality, fewer channels and no HD... Not really interested in spending the money :)
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Dylan Reeve, in reply to
Dylan – Netflix or Hulu Plus? About to go that way myself – AD etc on Netflix suggests its better, does Hulu really get any worthy tv shows that Netflix don’t?
I use both. Netflix has a pretty good range, but there are definitely things that don't end up on Netflix.
Hulu is better for "catch up" content - Netflix usually doesn't get shows until about the same time they're released on DVD. Whereas Hulu has content immediately after US airing (for many things). You can usually watch the most recent episode for free on Hulu, but anything older requries a Hulu Plus account.
Also you can't watch Hulu on devices (Roku or Apple TV for example) without a Plus account.
I'm pretty happy with the Roku we have and paying $5/mth to Unblock-US for a DNS-based service to access overseas content. Much easier than VPNs and it works with any device that's connected to our home network.
For just browser-based viewing the Firefox/Chrome addon MediaHint is pretty excellent. It works with many of the major providers and it totally free.
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Dylan Reeve, in reply to
Check out Slingshot’s marketing – bizzaro!
Yeah, they're going to the nudge nudge wink wink plausible deniability angle... "Oh noooooo, it's not so you can access overseas content in breach of the terms of those sites. It's just a convenient services for your overseas house guests"
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Euan Mason, in reply to
The Premier League had 80% of weekend games and all weekday games though so we were all seeing our teams practically every week, every game, and it was easily recordable via MySky. Hard to see where the improvement is with this.
The big improvement is the price. With Sky you are forced to buy loads of content that you don't necessarily want before you even begin paying for sport broadcasts. It will be interesting to see what happens on the price front as consumers make up their minds.
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Euan Mason, in reply to
Those born of the less anxious or less caring walk to school and still play contact sports with an oval ball, where they discover manly virtues like stoicism and courage in way not likely to give them a death wish in their later teens/early twenties. And because they enjoy it, they are more likely to keep playing when they get older.
As I near my 7th decade I still play football, but I wouldn’t dare subject my knees to rugby.
Football is a bit like life: With age you understand in far greater subtlety how to play the game, but your body increasingly restrains you from implementing your understanding. The same cannot be said for rugby (much as I enjoy watching it also) because after a certain age it would be suicidal to walk onto the field.
Nice troll, though, Tom!
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Yamis, in reply to
I subscribed to NFL Game Pass last season and MLB TV this year. For this I get every game in the pre, post and regular season on demand and in full HD.
Hope you didn't pay too much for NFL League Pass. It was free last year (might have been a short running promotion but it came in the first week or two). God knows why, maybe to suck in more fans so that next year they'll decide stuff it, and pay for it. I took advantage and loved watching games in the school hols, 8 games on at once multi screened across my laptop, could flick between them depending on time outs, HT's stage of the game, tight games, blowouts etc, and then watch full replays later with all of the stops taken out and just showing the plays. Picture quality was good and never had any trouble with connections.
BOOYAH!!!!
Is an option for SKY to blow itself up and start offering a channel by channel package where you choose individual channels at a certain price ie SKY SPORT 1 for $7 a month, SKY SPORT 2 for $6 a month, Living channel for $2 a month etc etc. Pulling those number out of my arse, but thats been the basic gripe of everybody I know, or talk about them with since I can remember. They could base it on how much it costs them to get the content for each channel.
I just did a survey with SKY a week ago where I had to say what channels I watched each day and for how long and over the course of a week I watched sport, sport, sport, sport, a bit of home stuff on Living Channel and a few episodes of Time Team on the History channel. There's a good 25 channels of theirs that I don't watch 2 seconds of .... EVER.
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Yamis, in reply to
Typical NZ boys seem to play rugby or league until their early twenties while thriving on a diet of cheap beer and KFC. Then they give up the sport but not the diet and wonder why they die of obesity and diabetes.
Well you described me well enough :)
I teach at a large high school where rugby is the number one sport (well, debatable but in the hierarchy's eyes it is) and about 15% of boys at the school play rugby (7 teams) and 2% play league (1 team).
In total that's about 200 boys playing those codes out of around 1,100 boys. About 100 boys play basketball (10 teams), and a similar number of girls (we are co-ed).
Our rugby numbers aren't decreasing they have been stable in the 7+ years I've been there.
On SKY and rugby and league though, if they lose those rights (say the NRL decides to set up a league pass type setup and the NZRU follows suit then SKY as we know it would be dead within a year unless they completely re-invented themselves in 5 minutes flat.
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Peter Darlington, in reply to
The big improvement is the price. With Sky you are forced to buy loads of content that you don't necessarily want before you even begin paying for sport broadcasts.
But that only works if EPL is the only thing you want to watch. You gain EPL and a price drop but lose Euro leagues, Champions League, rugby, cricket etc... Throw SOHO into the mix and yes, you pay through the nose but it's a one box management solution for everything and it's easy for lazy sods like me.
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Peter Darlington, in reply to
Nice troll, though, Tom!
He wasn't trolling, he was just having some fun. Apparently... :-)
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Hadyn Green, in reply to
Hope you didn't pay too much for NFL League Pass. It was free last year (might have been a short running promotion but it came in the first week or two).
Yeah that's why I said "subscribed" :) I had the free thing and it lasted the whole season (I signed up a workmate mid season). Interestingly when I logged into it with my account but in Japan it said I had to pay, so it was strictly a NZ freebie.
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And for Tennis fans, I see Wimbledon will be broadcast on YouTube sponsored by Rolex. I've no idea if there is any geolocation applying to the stream, but it does seem to be another example of the shift to computer based broadcast.
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Euan Mason, in reply to
But that only works if EPL is the only thing you want to watch. You gain EPL and a price drop but lose Euro leagues, Champions League, rugby, cricket etc… Throw SOHO into the mix and yes, you pay through the nose but it’s a one box management solution for everything and it’s easy for lazy sods like me.
Apparently the aim is to have a football channel on-line. I'd be happy paying for football and then again for rugby. It's still way cheaper than Sky. Yeah, I know that Sky offers other content like movies and news, but it is also riddled with ads and hardly better at those things than free to air - certainly not $80/month better.
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Sommet will have Bundesliga free to air on Freeview! Including Marco Rojas! Though seems unlikely he will start, but who knows?
$3-4 a week is nothing to get ALL the EPL games, a fair swag of them on demand, and highlights packages. Anyone who says otherwise isn't a football fan or more likely has no access to decent internet. If you buy one less beer a week you can buy the Coliseum package for you and for a friend. This is far from price prohibitive.
The question is how to justify maintaining Sky for football fans and how Sky will step up. Will it be out to the bars for big matches or Sky sport cable-pooling (over to one friend's house for the big matches)?
It also brings EPL games and highlights free to air on both Sommet and TVNZ which is actually a much higher level of free coverage than we have seen since Sky got the EPL.
What has happened with Igloo? Apparently it hasn't been that popular?
As for the telco angle- I imagine or at least hope- that the smart telco would want to get first mover indentification as the telco to give the best service for watching content over the internet (something I already associate with ORCON with their unlimited caps on youtube and isky).
Hopefully we'll see some serious competition around this opportunity and consumers will be the winners. Interesting times, but Sky is still streets ahead and how they react will be interesting.
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martinb, in reply to
and then these folk have children with the help and these children end up as perennial internet commentators?
still, as a snarky stereotype it's a different one from 'poofters, wogs and spastics'. Kinda like South Park on San Francisco...
Besides all pejorative stereotypes only apply to local football as you can watch your ancestral team or pretend you are worthy of hanging out with Mr R. Abrahmovic, Saudi princes, Malaysian moguls, American hucksters et al (see Key, J etc etc) while maintaining while maintaining a secure identity with a bit of local mongrel.
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anth, in reply to
I imagine or at least hope- that the smart telco would want to get first mover indentification as the telco to give the best service for watching content over the internet (something I already associate with ORCON with their unlimited caps on youtube and isky)
Not any more. Orcon closing O Zone because Sky changing content delivery network. Of course those organisations describe this as "changes" and an "upgrade".
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Rob Stowell, in reply to
What has happened with Igloo?
Cheapskate attempt to hoover up those of us who have resisted pay-tv with some 'affordable' options?
It's not tempting ... yet. Be interesting to see how the 'pay-per-view' model, which they offer for some movies and sport, works out though. -
We were talking about this issue in general tonight - not just football or rugby but Game of throne, Dr Who, you know all that stuff....
So what happens is that one company sells MY right to choose where to buy something to someone else, they even got paid for my rights ..... seems there's someone missing from this equation - don't I get a say? or a cut? these are my rights that are being bought and sold after all, surely it's ME who should be selling them
Maybe some legal eagle can comment on whether one could take these companies to court to turn this into a 3-party negotiation - perhaps I want to pay for my soccer free and clear? maybe I'll agree to watch some ads? maybe I want some competition in providers so I can choose the lowest cost one or the highest def one - I do want a say, I don't want to be stuck with monopolies quietly selling my rights between them
Personally I want a Sky without the sports channels or the religious channels or the home shopping network, I don't just want not to pay for them, I want them gone from my channel lineup, (as some of you know I used to build settop boxes - this was SO easy to implement), I want the 5 second immediate back skip on my mysky (the "what did he say" button, also trivial), I want to be able to create my own channel line up, in my own preferred order - these are all easy customer centered user interface things that one gets on settops in places with real competition, my mysky's UI hasn't changed since I bought it, it sucks, and sky wont let me buy a better one from a 3rd party provider, or build my own
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
one company sells MY right to choose where to buy something to someone else
Your mistake is thinking that you have a right to competitive supply of copyrighted material. You don't. Never have. It's not even particularly unreasonable that you have no such "right". You don't have a right to competitive supply of anything, in fact, copyrighted or not.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
Friday Teeshirt!
You don’t have a right to competitive supply
of anything, in fact, copyrighted or not.…and with this, the scales fell from their eyes.
The people of Realm E* rose as one
and got on with their lives…
eschewing the scenery
to follow the die
where they’re cast!
Serfs Up!* Does anyone really trust the Govt to get this right?
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Sacha, in reply to
do you trust NZ Post?
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