British broadcaster and ISP BSkyB ( Sky Broadband ) has continued its content deal with Microsoft this week by launching their Sky Player Internet TV service on the software giant’s XBox 360 games console. Broadband connected users can now watch on-demand content via their console and up to 24 live streaming TV channels. But keep an eye on how much of that precious bandwidth you use or your ISP might get angry.

There is of course a cost to the service and that starts with the need for an Xbox LIVE Gold membership at around £5 per month or £34.99 if you buy a 12 month pre-paid card (can be found for just £29.99 too if you look hard enough). Unfortunately the TV content itself will cost extra, at least for most people.

Those with an existing SkyTV and Sky Broadband Unlimited (aka - MAX) subscription will be able to access the content itself free, which is restricted to the channels you have already subscribed to. If you don't have the 'Unlimited' package but do have a SkyTV sub then you will still need to pay £10 per month for the 'multiroom' service to use it.


Non-Sky subscribers will have to stump up at least £15 per month to access the 360's new Sky content (reflective of their basic TV Entertainment Pack), which increases if you want extra content like sport or movies. The Basic Pack includes GOLD, Sky Real Lives, Sky Arts 1, MTV One, Sky Sports News, British Eurosport, ESPN Classic, Sky News, National Geographic, Nat Geo Wild, History, Eden, Cartoon Network, Boomerang, Nickelodeon, Disney Channel and Nick Jr.

That probably doesn't sound too bad but remember that this is a somewhat restrictive service. You can forget about HD content for now and you'll need a reliable 2Mbps connection to get the best video quality stream. However if you start using the service as a replacement for your terrestrial TV channels then make sure your ISP package can handle it.

We know that many of the cheapest big name providers often like to throw words like "unlimited" around but that's only because most of them can get away with it. If everybody suddenly started using their service as it was advertised then the performance would rapidly crumble under a falsely marketed economy (i.e. it couldn't handle the load).

Many ISPs would rather impose restrictions upon your service via a ‘Fair Usage Policy’ (FUP) than risk a degraded network performance for all their customers, while others may just charge you extra for each GigaByte of data you use above any pre-specified allowance (e.g. £1.50 per GB is not uncommon). Consider that an individual hour long TV show might use 1GB up all by itself and you soon see the problem. This of course varies from ISP to ISP, ask your provider first or check your package details.