Posted: 05th Dec, 2008 By: MarkJ
BSkyB has officially launched its new subscription based Sky Player TV (IPTV) service, which allows customers to watch live television from Sky on their broadband equipped computers (PC/MACs). Unlike Sky's other products, Sky Player TV is a separate service that does not require an existing Sky TV subscription.
The service will be powered by Microsoft Silverlight and PlayReady technology, which is capable of offering high-quality (but not High Definition, HD) content at bitrates of up to 1.8Mbps. That's likely to cause concern among some broadband ISPs, which may have trouble accommodating large amounts of natural online TV viewing.
To help balance this Sky's service will offer a choice of video quality levels to suit a customers broadband connection. However we suspect that subscribers whom believe they are on a cheap "
unlimited" service and currently receive a reasonable speed might still get carried away with their usage.
New customers will be able to choose from three online subscription packages to suit their needs. Subscription packages for Sky Player TV range in price from £15 for the Entertainment Pack through to £34 for the addition of all of the Sky Sports family of channels.
The Entertainment Pack initially offers access to Disney Channel, British Eurosport, National Geographic Channel, Sky News, and Sky Sports News. Customers can add to their Entertainment Pack by subscribing to one or both of the Sky Sports Packs to access Sky Sports 1, 2, 3, and Sky Sports Xtra.
All Sky TV customers will continue to have access to Sky Players on-demand content in line with the channels they are able to access through their core Sky TV subscription. Customers with a Sky Multiroom or a
Sky Broadband Max subscription are additionally able to access live channels for no extra charge.
Channels price list and service links :http://corporate.sky.com/documents/pdf/press_releases/SkyPlayerTVhttp://www.sky.com/skyplayer