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The future of Sky TV

Well looks like finally some progress in matching Cable and Sat signal quality with streaming quality in NOW:

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.p...-and-hdr-video-streaming-via-ultra-boost.html

So for all Sky Sports channels in UHD this will cost £ 34.99 + £ 6 HD Boost + £ 9 Ultra Boost. Total £ 49.99. So that's basically £ 50 for Spy Sports in UHD. the discounted 6 months price is £ 41 for 6 months. And Sky is offering Sky Stream + Sky Sports + Sky TV + Netflix with ads for £ 43 for 24 months. So not sure how the NOW deal is a good price for lower budgets.
 
So for all Sky Sports channels in UHD this will cost £ 34.99 + £ 6 HD Boost + £ 9 Ultra Boost. Total £ 49.99. So that's basically £ 50 for Spy Sports in UHD. the discounted 6 months price is £ 41 for 6 months. And Sky is offering Sky Stream + Sky Sports + Sky TV + Netflix with ads for £ 43 for 24 months. So not sure how the NOW deal is a good price for lower budgets.
You don't need both boosts, It's either £6 HD Boost or £9 Ultra Boost for £43.99 without offer
lets compare this to a similar 31 day rolling contract Sky stream that's Sky Stream + Sky Sports + Ultra HD + Sky TV & Netflix with ads for £60
Plus £5 for add skipping on-demand stuff that's included with NowTV boosts

So without offers you can get Now TV Ent + Cinema + Sports + UHD boost for £64
 
You don't need both boosts, It's either £6 HD Boost or £9 Ultra Boost for £43.99 without offer
lets compare this to a similar 31 day rolling contract Sky stream that's Sky Stream + Sky Sports + Ultra HD + Sky TV & Netflix with ads for £60
Plus £5 for add skipping on-demand stuff that's included with NowTV boosts

So without offers you can get Now TV Ent + Cinema + Sports + UHD boost for £64
Thanks. I couldn't order the Ultra Boost on NOW if I removed the Boost offer so I assumed that meant I needed to have both to get UHD. It's really mind blowing that it's not clear even on the Sky site when I try to price Sky Stream it doesn't say whether you get Sport Sports HD channels or not. And even when I add the UHD & Dolby Atmos add-on it's not clear if I can get Sky Sports in HD and there is no separate HD add-on either. However when pricing Sky Q it does show a "Ultra HD + HD" add-on and if you add the HD add-on it removes the Ultra HD + HD one and viceversa so you must be right.

Sky Q + TV (£26.50) + Sports (£20) + HD/UHD (£12) + Netflix basic (£4.50) comes at £63 with offers.
For Sky Stream I get Sky Entertainment & Netflix (£23) + Sky Sports (£19) + UHD & Dolby Atmos (£1) comes at £43 with offers. Doesn't look right to me as £20 cheaper than Q and no mention of HD channels. Is Sky Stream on HD as a minimum? I don't see an HD add-on to add.
 
Sky Q + TV (£26.50) + Sports (£20) + HD/UHD (£12) + Netflix basic (£4.50) comes at £63 with offers.
For Sky Stream I get Sky Entertainment & Netflix (£23) + Sky Sports (£19) + UHD & Dolby Atmos (£1) comes at £43 with offers. Doesn't look right to me as £20 cheaper than Q and no mention of HD channels. Is Sky Stream on HD as a minimum? I don't see an HD add-on to add.
So HD is standard on Sky Stream for all packages, but not on Sky Q

I was comparing pricing to rolling contract as that's par with NowTV obviously if you commit to 24 months Sky Stream you can get it cheaper
Also don't forget you need to add Whole Home at £12 for watching on more devices too plus hardware cost after first device
 
So I was looking at Sky's offers for TV and broadband and it's clear to me that they are now only pushing their Sky Stream and Sky Glass products. It's even hard to find the good old Sky Q offering. I know there are a lot of cord cutters which are either happy with no TV or the Sky Stream product. But the big money driver for Sky has always been Sky Sports and Sky Sports over IP is not as compelling as it is when comes live (either via SatTV or cable TV). I still remember watching England in the last world cup in the BBC iPlayer App to get the UHD stream and hearing my neighbours shout England's goals before they happened. At the moment the delay is about 30secs which is a lot. May be in the future they can come up with newer technologies which allow them to reduce this. We certainly all are able to do live video conferences without such delay but obviously distributing 4K content from one point to millions of other points is not as easy as it seems.

So what do people think it's going to happen with Sky's Sat TV business? Clearly it's slowly dying as more people cut the cord or move to IPTV solutions. So will the hold outs that want live sports keep it going or will they give up? What do you think?

According to satellite operator SES, Sky has once again extended contracts to use a number of its satellite transponders. New agreements now run until the end of 2028. This builds on a separate contract between Sky and SES that was extended last year.

Satellite TV is very much dead in the water.

 



Satellite TV is very much dead in the water.

Yeah I know satellite TV is a slow death technology but on my previous price comparisons the Stream offering was on the same price as Q or thereabouts and there was no UHD offering on Stream. Seems that that has been sorted now and I see a big discount on Stream now as expect as obviously much cheaper to broadcast TV over IP than over satellite. Obviously IP TV needs a decent internet connection which wasn't something you could get in most places in the UK but that's clearly changing quickly with Altnets and the duopoly dinosaurs Openreach and VMO2/nextfibre building fibre.

I do find puzzling that it's unclear what channels I get on Stream. And it seems that VM still has the edge in pricing terms for an all sports (Sky + TNT) UHD + broadband offering. I get £98 on Sky Stream + Netflix Premium with 500Mb (not clear if TNT UHD is available) vs currently paying £78 for a similar offering on VM and that also includes TNT UHD and all Cinema channels in UHD. I don't really get why VM can beat Sky specially now that VM charges for TNT Sports separately.
 
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@GreenLantern22 VM own their own network, their backhaul is used by TalkTalk and Sky instead of Openreach where possible, in fact I read the other day that Origin's SOGEA is using TalkTalk backhaul over Vodafone.

I'm still getting my head around those interconnects.
 
@GreenLantern22 VM own their own network, their backhaul is used by TalkTalk and Sky instead of Openreach where possible, in fact I read the other day that Origin's SOGEA is using TalkTalk backhaul over Vodafone.

I'm still getting my head around those interconnects.
Yeah I get that and in the cable vs satellite TV comparison I could understand why VM has the edge as I am guessing it's much cheaper to maintain a cable network than broadcasting via TV satellite. But that difference is now gone as sure it's cheaper to broadcasting via IP TV than cable (considering the cost of maintaining the cable network). And while VM owns the IP network whereas Sky uses Openreach Sky owns the Sports channels and has a lot of other content too whereas VM has no content.

Maybe the issue here is that the Sky Sports + huge Premier Legue TV rights marriage is not sustainable anymore? Will Sky be able to transition all the Satellite TV customers into Stream/Glass customers? With so many streaming services is the TV bundling model dead? Or are we going to see a rebundling move among the streaming services?
 
I then found this page:

https://www.sky.com/help/articles/tv-channel-list-sky-glass

Which is the official Sky page with all the Sky Stream and Sky Glass channels. Under Sports this is what I see missing compared to VM:

  • While there is a Sky Sports Main Event Ultra HDR I now have 4 UHD Sky Sports channels in VM: Sky Sports Main Event UHD, Sky Sports UHD F1, Sky Sports UHD 1 and Sky Sports UHD 2 so the last 3 seem missing
  • All the 9 Eurosport HD channels and their UHD channel seems missing
  • TNT Sports looks fine
  • Premier Sports is unavailable Sky Stream and Sky Glass
  • Racing TV is unavailable Sky Stream and Sky Glass
  • LaLiga TV is unavailable Sky Stream and Sky Glass
Why can't IPTV services match the offering of cable/satellite TV services?
 
I then found this page:

https://www.sky.com/help/articles/tv-channel-list-sky-glass

Which is the official Sky page with all the Sky Stream and Sky Glass channels. Under Sports this is what I see missing compared to VM:

  • While there is a Sky Sports Main Event Ultra HDR I now have 4 UHD Sky Sports channels in VM: Sky Sports Main Event UHD, Sky Sports UHD F1, Sky Sports UHD 1 and Sky Sports UHD 2 so the last 3 seem missing
  • All the 9 Eurosport HD channels and their UHD channel seems missing
  • TNT Sports looks fine
  • Premier Sports is unavailable Sky Stream and Sky Glass
  • Racing TV is unavailable Sky Stream and Sky Glass
  • LaLiga TV is unavailable Sky Stream and Sky Glass
Why can't IPTV services match the offering of cable/satellite TV services?
A good question, I can't image it is a technical issue so perhaps its a regional licensing conflict.
 
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A good question, I can't image it is a technical issue so perhaps its a regional licensing conflict.
There's still some transmitter issues across the country, for example, locally BBC can show local news in HD, while ITV HD seems to still transmit Meridian, which makes no sense for me in Northamptonshire.

Freely should fix a lot of these issues.
 
while ITV HD seems to still transmit Meridian
Think the same happens here too. Generally get Central in SD and HD anyways from the local transmitter (for some reason, I think it should be West Country in all honesty) but I can get West Country in SD (on like 800 or something like that).

Can't get West Country in HD though and I don't think they broadcast it in HD (the whole regions stuff is confusing anyways with like Central West, West Country West etc).
 
  • While there is a Sky Sports Main Event Ultra HDR I now have 4 UHD Sky Sports channels in VM: Sky Sports Main Event UHD, Sky Sports UHD F1, Sky Sports UHD 1 and Sky Sports UHD 2 so the last 3 seem missing
The extra UHD channels are hidden in the 900s on Sky Stream (the usual access is via red button on an event, I believe, but you also manually type the numbers into the remote).
  • All the 9 Eurosport HD channels and their UHD channel seems missing
I can only assume Sky didn't want to provide transponder space or pay specifically for them (or something) as they were all on Sky for the Tokyo Olympics. Sky customers do still get the content, as they get Discovery+ free anyway (well, except people still on non-Q sat boxes) so they still get the content but it's only via IP and the app even on Sky Q (but with no UHD...).

  • Premier Sports is unavailable Sky Stream and Sky Glass
  • Racing TV is unavailable Sky Stream and Sky Glass
  • LaLiga TV is unavailable Sky Stream and Sky Glass
Presumably all rights things. Racing TV is sold/marketed by Sky though so a confusing lack there.

Premier Sports (and LaLigaTV) is sold in the UK directly by Premier Sports and activated by viewing card number (Sky sub is not actually required at all). Sky Stream doesn't allow for third-party channel sales like the satelite platform so not much can happen there until they decide to move towards an app, or well via Sky... Similarly TNT Sports customers who pay TNT directly (or those paying via BT/EE) cannot get the channels added onto Sky Stream unless they change to pay Sky directly.

In Ireland Premier Sports is on Sky Stream as it's sold directly by Sky in a single pack (along with TNT).

Maybe the issue here is that the Sky Sports + huge Premier Legue TV rights marriage is not sustainable anymore? Will Sky be able to transition all the Satellite TV customers into Stream/Glass customers? With so many streaming services is the TV bundling model dead? Or are we going to see a rebundling move among the streaming services?

I think the determination for a full IP move will be commercial customers. Sky Q and 4K only launched last year for businesses, up to then they still issued Sky HD boxes, and the vast majority of business customers still have those - although it is quicker to move over as there are far fewer business customers in the UK than residental obviously. HD has been off for years for businesses for example. Additionally both Premier Sports and TNT Sport are sold directly to businesses only via viewing card number and who knows where the IP move might be. The Prime Premier Leauge games were also sold to businesses via TNT on the Sky satelite platform too, not IP.

With Sky Sports+ starting I'm not sure how this will impact things, as not sure if some of those extra feeds might be IP only?
 
My Sky contract is up for renewal and I’m happy with Sky Q, the operator on the phone kept wanting to go through her script listing “the benefits” of Sky Glass, I kept telling her I’m not interested.

In the end I was forced to tell her I would ring back another time

Perhaps Sky are already trying to move customers away from the Satellite!!

I’ve been with Sky for 27 years
 
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Perhaps Sky are already trying to move customers away from the Satellite!!
Of course they are. Using IP delivery they can follow every programme you watch, and use this data when negotiating rights deals and/or sell it on to other companies.

They'll also have an eye on eventually eliminating the satellite costs. With IP, *you* pay for the delivery channel.
 
Another factor is that Q is well known to have problems working with routers other than those that were built specifically for Q, particularly for multi room customers who are streaming to mini boxes. This apparently includes Sky's latest wifi6 router.
There's still some transmitter issues across the country, for example, locally BBC can show local news in HD, while ITV HD seems to still transmit Meridian, which makes no sense for me in Northamptonshire.

Freely should fix a lot of these issues.

Don't need IP streaming to fix that.

It used to be the case that Freeview HD and Sky/Freesat were only partially regionalised (eg everyone in the south west would get ITV Central) but the investment has gone in to change this. For whatever reason ITV have yet to do the final bits of plumbing to fully regionalise in the way the BBC has now done. It's particularly strange when ITV has a direct financial incentive to get you the correct regional ads, instead of showing Birmingham car dealer ads to people in Bodmin
 
Another factor is that Q is well known to have problems working with routers other than those that were built specifically for Q, particularly for multi room customers who are streaming to mini boxes. This apparently includes Sky's latest wifi6 router.


Don't need IP streaming to fix that.

It used to be the case that Freeview HD and Sky/Freesat were only partially regionalised (eg everyone in the south west would get ITV Central) but the investment has gone in to change this. For whatever reason ITV have yet to do the final bits of plumbing to fully regionalise in the way the BBC has now done. It's particularly strange when ITV has a direct financial incentive to get you the correct regional ads, instead of showing Birmingham car dealer ads to people in Bodmin

This is bandied about a lot about Sky Q. If you configure it properly it works fine. I had it working with opnSense/pfSense for years. The box itself would lose the thumbnails after a while so I put the box on a timer for a weekly reboot. That' s probably a memory leak - mine was 8 years old by the time we binned it off for Stream. The Q box itself worked fine other than that.
 
This is bandied about a lot about Sky Q. If you configure it properly it works fine. I had it working with opnSense/pfSense for years. The box itself would lose the thumbnails after a while so I put the box on a timer for a weekly reboot. That' s probably a memory leak - mine was 8 years old by the time we binned it off for Stream. The Q box itself worked fine other than that.
the issue appears to occur if wifi (particularly mesh / multi AP) is in use for one or more boxes, and if you have multiroom. If you are doing neither then it probably works fine. I mention this because you've brought up pfsense, which has no practical wifi capability (and is certainly not recommended by Netgate)
 
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