Fun and games feeding it through the vented grills on the house.
*** Sky Q Thread ***
- Thread starter Cosimo
- Start date
Fun and games feeding it through the vented grills on the house.
Soldato
Good luck being up to date with all the exclusive content that Netflix and Amazon are buying up from the traditional US writers, right from under the noses of the likes of HBO etc.
That's the exact issue with Sky, the produce nothing themselves (worth watching/selling) they only spend money on sport, meaning they will be at the mercy of the content owners, which is fast becoming the exact content providers mentioned earlier.
Sky Q does not compete with streaming as it stands, it uses expensive proprietary hardware, which you don't own and only real thing it offers is getting the same subscription in another room, at a cost that is more than it is presently in the same average quality.
Associate
@Journey: I will agree in that Sports, mostly football, get too much money through the sale of TV rights. Sky are no longer the sole guilty party now.
When they first launched they did add money to the bidding for rights to show football matches and this has risen each year since. They have added other sports and I recall a lot of people getting upset over Test Cricket moving to Sky too.
A few years ago BT Sport launched and they managed to grab a good selection of rights too. Their bid was way too rich for Sky at the time. Not because Sky couldn't afford it, but because Sky felt it was too much.
Last year Sky won the rights for more football but they had to raise the stakes. As a direct result people like myself who don't subscribe to the Sports package were faced with some steep price hikes.
Netflix and Amazon Prime are now competitors in their own right. A few Netflix subscribers were recently upset when they could no longer use their VPNs to circumvent the blocks to material which wasn't licensed for viewing in the UK. I'm sure many have worked out how to get around those by now.
As @TheVoice has pointed out, the Sky Q family does support a lot more potential content. With the apps included, such as YouTube, you can now stream some content. Whilst nothing has been ruled in or out, Netflix and Amazon Prime won't be available for now. I would suggest this is a case of "watch this space".
Of course both those services now compete with Sky for the rights to air films in the UK, so it might be a difficult pill for Sky to swallow if they were to allow those apps on their Sky Q boxes.
@Spook187: That's fine. Sky Q is not being sold to everyone. The Sky+ HD range will be going strong for many ears to come. Their development plan alone is already mapped out for several years. It isn't impossible to see some of the features which will be available on Sky Q on the Sky+ HD range. Of course this might take a little longer and it won't be all of them.
Content wise, yes you'll be able to watch Sky 1 HD on either Sky+ HD or Sky Q. Once the 4K UHD service is launched there will be additional material, but like you I don't know if it will be on a single channel, like Sky 3D, or multiple channels (i.e. Sky 1 4K, Sky Movies Premiere 4K, Sky Sports 1 4K).
@McBain : Yes they haven't launched their 4K service yet. There are multiple reasons for this which I can see, but of course I'm just guessing.
The broadcast standards for 4K UHD were only ratified at the end of last November. The standard for 4K UHD HDR were only agreed in December. No one, other than Sky's staff, currently has a Sky Q Silver box installed, so who is going to watch it?
It's pointless launching a service when no one has the means to view it.
Now that the broadcast standards have been agreed, perhaps Sky can ensure that they are showing their material at these standards and can get on with the final testing to ensure that their firmware can deliver the content seamlessly within their new Sky Q platform.
Then come the launch date, and everyone has had a firmware update on their Sky Q boxes, Sky can sit back a little as those people with 4K TVs that are compatible with the new standards can tune in and watch the new content.
There are a lot of features which you're going to love on Sky Q. It's going to take time to filter out, but many people will love it.
@Journey: I think that you need to look again at what Sky does show. Over the past year Sky has increased, not started, the amount of original content which they produce. Such statements as yours are wrong.
The Sky+ HD STBs are owned by the customer. Sky Q is 'rented'. NTL, now Virgin Media, have been renting their STBs for many years now. It's a different model with advantages and drawbacks.
One major advantage is going to be seen when a box fails after say 2 years. Currently with the Sky+ HD STB you're asked to pay for a new one. With Sky Q it's rented so you should be able to just get it swapped over.
Their is an option to cover you in case of accidental damage (i.e. spill the coffee over it).
P.S. Sorry I couldn't use the quotes, it's playing up for some reason.
When they first launched they did add money to the bidding for rights to show football matches and this has risen each year since. They have added other sports and I recall a lot of people getting upset over Test Cricket moving to Sky too.
A few years ago BT Sport launched and they managed to grab a good selection of rights too. Their bid was way too rich for Sky at the time. Not because Sky couldn't afford it, but because Sky felt it was too much.
Last year Sky won the rights for more football but they had to raise the stakes. As a direct result people like myself who don't subscribe to the Sports package were faced with some steep price hikes.
Netflix and Amazon Prime are now competitors in their own right. A few Netflix subscribers were recently upset when they could no longer use their VPNs to circumvent the blocks to material which wasn't licensed for viewing in the UK. I'm sure many have worked out how to get around those by now.
As @TheVoice has pointed out, the Sky Q family does support a lot more potential content. With the apps included, such as YouTube, you can now stream some content. Whilst nothing has been ruled in or out, Netflix and Amazon Prime won't be available for now. I would suggest this is a case of "watch this space".
Of course both those services now compete with Sky for the rights to air films in the UK, so it might be a difficult pill for Sky to swallow if they were to allow those apps on their Sky Q boxes.
@Spook187: That's fine. Sky Q is not being sold to everyone. The Sky+ HD range will be going strong for many ears to come. Their development plan alone is already mapped out for several years. It isn't impossible to see some of the features which will be available on Sky Q on the Sky+ HD range. Of course this might take a little longer and it won't be all of them.
Content wise, yes you'll be able to watch Sky 1 HD on either Sky+ HD or Sky Q. Once the 4K UHD service is launched there will be additional material, but like you I don't know if it will be on a single channel, like Sky 3D, or multiple channels (i.e. Sky 1 4K, Sky Movies Premiere 4K, Sky Sports 1 4K).
@McBain : Yes they haven't launched their 4K service yet. There are multiple reasons for this which I can see, but of course I'm just guessing.
The broadcast standards for 4K UHD were only ratified at the end of last November. The standard for 4K UHD HDR were only agreed in December. No one, other than Sky's staff, currently has a Sky Q Silver box installed, so who is going to watch it?
It's pointless launching a service when no one has the means to view it.
Now that the broadcast standards have been agreed, perhaps Sky can ensure that they are showing their material at these standards and can get on with the final testing to ensure that their firmware can deliver the content seamlessly within their new Sky Q platform.
Then come the launch date, and everyone has had a firmware update on their Sky Q boxes, Sky can sit back a little as those people with 4K TVs that are compatible with the new standards can tune in and watch the new content.
There are a lot of features which you're going to love on Sky Q. It's going to take time to filter out, but many people will love it.
@Journey: I think that you need to look again at what Sky does show. Over the past year Sky has increased, not started, the amount of original content which they produce. Such statements as yours are wrong.
The Sky+ HD STBs are owned by the customer. Sky Q is 'rented'. NTL, now Virgin Media, have been renting their STBs for many years now. It's a different model with advantages and drawbacks.
One major advantage is going to be seen when a box fails after say 2 years. Currently with the Sky+ HD STB you're asked to pay for a new one. With Sky Q it's rented so you should be able to just get it swapped over.
Their is an option to cover you in case of accidental damage (i.e. spill the coffee over it).
P.S. Sorry I couldn't use the quotes, it's playing up for some reason.
Caporegime
- Joined
- 30 Jul 2013
- Posts
- 28,943
I read though the pricing yesterday and decided it's not for me.
I currently have a HD Humax Freesat box which costs me diddly squat per month and a Netflix sub of £8.99 including some heavily compressed 4k content.
Considering Sky Q hasn't launched with 4K and they haven't really been specific about when they will firmware update the boxes - £54 a month + one off fee's seems a lot of money
I've got Sky Fibre broadband, but they don't really offer a deal, so in total with the broadband it works out at £81 a month which is £1000 a year to watch TV!
Thanks but no thanks.
I currently have a HD Humax Freesat box which costs me diddly squat per month and a Netflix sub of £8.99 including some heavily compressed 4k content.
Considering Sky Q hasn't launched with 4K and they haven't really been specific about when they will firmware update the boxes - £54 a month + one off fee's seems a lot of money
I've got Sky Fibre broadband, but they don't really offer a deal, so in total with the broadband it works out at £81 a month which is £1000 a year to watch TV!
Thanks but no thanks.
Still no date for when non Sky BB customers can order.
Soldato
I'll hit a few key points, and leave it that for Sky and Sports.
Sky are solely responsible for sports being so expensive, they started it, so anyone wanting to get any coverage had to outbid Sky, if they want to try and compete. It's not like the sports rights holders are going to do whats best for the supporters of the sport, they do it for as much cash as possible. If you could underbid, because you offered better quality, and better service, and hit more viewers, then you'd still have coverage on the BBC and ITV. End of story, Sky ruined it and increased non-sports viewers prices in the process.
What has the Netflix VPN issue here go to do with anything? As Netflix etc. will have more and more original content, it will be available worldwide immediately across the globe, as they own the rights.
As for things like Youtube, really? I mean, come on, every decent new TV has that built in, and besides, it much easier to cast from your laptop/tablet/phone that using the box under the TV, and I hardly see Netflix appearing on Sky boxes as Netflix have a deal ongoing with Virgin Media.
With regards to your comment @Spook187 - you've just pointed out the huge gaping flaw that will be a thing of the past sooner than people care to admit. channels.
I mean, channels what the point (other than live events and news), full of pre-programmed content, stuffed full of adverts that you don't want, with stupid logos in the corner?
Why be stuck with one channel of premium quality output, limiting to delivering 24 hours of content a day, with the potential to annoy more people than you make happy by broadcasting things on that channel they don't like.
Huge servers, full of content in every quality needed, from low bandwidth to UHD on demand whenever you want it, in any order and no need to set a 'planner' to record it. Not to mention not needing a proprietary piece of hardware to view it on. All those folk with 4K Smart TV's have had access to to some 4k content for quite sometime. Where are Sky... still not even off the starting blocks, and don't even mention the fact they don't broadcast in 1080p yet.
I took my Amazon Fire stick with me on business before Christmas, and used my Prime account and my Netflix account in my hotel, in another country! Sky have zero hope of competing with this.
Then you have the subscriber base, Sky are far too small to compete with likes of Amazon and Netflix for original content, Netflix have circa 75 million subscribers so far, that's 75 million people paying money to them every month, and they have not even gone fully global yet. Sky will get a taste of their own medicine, like what they did to BBC, ITV, Channel 4 with the sports bidding, they will be forced out, since they spent £4.18 billion on football games for three years, where will they get the money to buy the next big show from.
As for Sky's own content, they made Fortitude, that cost them £25m for one show. they made a few more, how many of those have they sold to other networks? How many of those are being streamed by 100's millions of people worldwide, probably none. What is Sky's budget to buy original content in, £500 million, 3/4 of a billion? Basically, it'll never be enough, Sky are too small to compete globally, and that's what they need to start doing to keep people hard earned coming onto their coffers.
Rented boxes, fine. HUGE upfront cost, no way. What is this Huge upfront cost for? Virgin etc build the rental into the monthly sub cost.
I can't wait to see the response of Sky when they release this to non Sky BB customers, half of the features won't work, and they'll immediately blame the fact you aren't using a Sky Hub, and you must switch to take advantage of the extended Wi-Fi coverage and power line networking.
"Sorry sir buy your Asus RT-AC87U isn't fully compatible, use our superior Sky Hub and you'll be fine, just sign up to Sky BB and well send you one for £2 million."
I could go on, but I think being brainwashed by your own marketing shows the weakness, it's like watching the Apprentice, but, but, but we spent ages making this idea and we think it's great, so everyone else must love it!
It's average at best, late, too expensive and requires far too much investment in time and space for nothing much extra than you already get, which you are still being ripped off for.
Satellite TV still has a place because its footprint is nationwide. Not everyone has broadband fast enough to strea, content to their hearts content. Some can't even stream a single piece of content to a single device. The government says this will change but I wouldn't hold your breath. Sky has its fingers in a lot of pies these days, from advertising, broadcasting, content creation and also has satellite coverage in Germany/Austria and Italy and is likely looking elsewhere as well. Sky make a lot of their own content these days, not just fortitude either. And fortitude was syndicated to loads of places including into the U.S. As well, although not on any major network.
I will also say, to my mind anyway, the rapid increase in the cost of Premier League football is squarely and solely down to the PL itself and their blind auction. If there were a series of escalated bidding processes the cost would be much, much lower. We are told weekly about Sky viewing figures and week in, week out, the football gets the most viewers. Sky 'needs' the football. It's the cornerstone of the Sky Sports channels. Customers expect it to be on Sky Sports.
I will also say, to my mind anyway, the rapid increase in the cost of Premier League football is squarely and solely down to the PL itself and their blind auction. If there were a series of escalated bidding processes the cost would be much, much lower. We are told weekly about Sky viewing figures and week in, week out, the football gets the most viewers. Sky 'needs' the football. It's the cornerstone of the Sky Sports channels. Customers expect it to be on Sky Sports.
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The landscape has changed for sure, and they've produced some great stuff, but the majority of the big-name popular shows are still on Sky etc first. Good luck ever seeing HBO on Netflix.
I also struggle to see how it's good for the consumer that the stuff worth watching is spread over various different services. It just ends up costing you more money to watch the same amount of stuff. Competition can be healthy but it's also a hassle.
In another room, or on a phone or tablet in the home or out. The clear intention of SkyQ is to give people more ways to watch Sky content in response to how they're already watching the likes of Netflix, Amazon, catch-up etc.
Soldato
Yes, and it all started when Sky forced an almost unrefusable offer to the PL in 1992, £302m for 5 seasons, 3 times more that they would have got from the BBC and ITV for that deal. They then continued that relationship until 2004, and spending a total of £2 billion between 1992-2004, the PL then realised that they could sell these rights by having people bid.
So don't defend Sky, or blame the PL for what good old Rupert started, they made the bed now every subscriber has to lie in it.
Split off Sports as it's own product, separating the subscriptions completely then leave Sky with a content provider only roll for entertainment channels, because that's what they are trying to compete against. The sad fact is they can't, they've backed themselves into a corner, so they have to keep putting more and more in to sports, just to keep the subscriber base they have now, ironically then raising prices so people leave.
You may work for them, but there is no long term future for Sky as they currently operate unless they fix some serious flaws in their business model.
Soldato
I don't think you've grasped the problem, Netflix and Amazon are paying more money to writers than even people like HBO can, to ensure they get the content people want to watch. They are doing this by offering to buy more episodes up front, in a lot of cases two full seasons, the writers cannot turn this down, as that's their job to sell shows.
Pretty soon a lot of the shows HBO would have purchased the rights to produce will have been bought by the competitors, so the next big show might never be on Sky due to this, and Amazon already have rights to show older HBO shows.
Also you like to be up to date, but you'll never have the luxury of having 12-24 episode to watch on day one of the show being released with Sky, you'll still have to wait 13 weeks, or however long.
I don't personally care about watching the newest TV shows as soon as it's out, I like having them there to watch when ever I please, at my own pace, it's not a competition, unless you must go in to work and be like ' OMG, did you see The New Show ilast night it was amazeballs'
I agree, selecting an app on my TV is real hassle takes ages, and that huge £15 pm bill for unlimited content, on loads of devices at once, not to mention, the free included music streaming, photo storage and unlimited next day/2 hour delivery is killing my wallet
And you think the networks and international broadcasters are just going to sit idly and let that happen? Of course not. You sound a bit like the people who say "physical media is dead", somehow managing to ignore that DVD and CDs still sell very, very well. The way people watch 'TV' might be changing but there's still a massive number of people who simply sit there and watch their favourite programmes as they're being broadcast, adverts and all. That isn't going anywhere any time soon.
That doesn't bother me at all. My Sky box is always near-enough full with new episodes of various shows to watch and if I do feel like binging on something on one of the other services I'll do just that anyway.
I agree, selecting an app on my TV is real hassle takes ages, and that huge £15 pm bill for unlimited content, on loads of devices at once, not to mention, the free included music streaming, photo storage and unlimited next day/2 hour delivery is killing my wallet
My point was that now that decent TV is spread across various services, it costs the consumer more to stay current with it all. I pay £15pm for Sky+HD (which is cheap, but many pay considerably more), I get Amazon Instant Video free but that'd be £6.60pm, then Netflix would be £7.49pm until they raise their prices yet again. So instead of paying £15ish for all the TV I could want, it's effectively double that. Yeah, great.
I remember once if you bought the whole Sky package you had it all. Way before box office and pay per view.
No longer the case today. :/
What does annoy me though is say for example a box set of boardwalk empire, you only have a certain amount of time to watch it due to how long the broadcaster has the rights to show it, fair enough, but once you download it on your box you should have it there for good not when they say you have to watch it before this given date, some of us have busy lives with work and what not so just want to dip in and out of our planner when we want not when we are told to otherwise lose the show you have downloaded.
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Soldato
So let me get this straight, you are complaining about it costing you potentially £30 per month, of which half that goes to Sky?
What amazing selection of movie channels and exclusive TV shows do you get for that £15 that goes to Sky? Don't bother including any free to air channels, or content that is duplicated on the other services. A couple of shows on Sky Atlantic, and a few things on Sky 1?
Content, oh and its already happening, look at what just happened at Sundance, Amazon and Netflix pulled the rug from under the other studios. Here's a nice big number for you $6 billion, that's how much Netflix will be spending on content this year, all of which will be included in your £7.49.
Also, why would I think physical media would die? Nothing compares to the quality of a blu-ray at high bit-rate with HD audio, I'm failing too see the comparison to TV channels however. TV will change, it won't vanish but maybe of the back of it there will be a lot less tosh, fewer channels with higher quality. I mean unless you still watch video tapes, right?
What amazing selection of movie channels and exclusive TV shows do you get for that £15 that goes to Sky? Don't bother including any free to air channels, or content that is duplicated on the other services. A couple of shows on Sky Atlantic, and a few things on Sky 1?
Content, oh and its already happening, look at what just happened at Sundance, Amazon and Netflix pulled the rug from under the other studios. Here's a nice big number for you $6 billion, that's how much Netflix will be spending on content this year, all of which will be included in your £7.49.
Also, why would I think physical media would die? Nothing compares to the quality of a blu-ray at high bit-rate with HD audio, I'm failing too see the comparison to TV channels however. TV will change, it won't vanish but maybe of the back of it there will be a lot less tosh, fewer channels with higher quality. I mean unless you still watch video tapes, right?
These 'serious flaws', what are they exactly? Why are you so sure that they exist anyway? Because you find Sky too expensive? Millions of people (12 million at the last count in the 2015 Annual report. In the UK alone!) have Sky services of some sort or another. That's an awful lot of customers for a company with serious flaws in their business model.
38 million products (TV, Talk, Broadband, Now TV, standalone Sky Go/Mobile TV) in total in the UK alone.
3.1 Million people watched the final Episode of Game of Thrones on Sky Atlantic. That's more than most other programs on terrestrial TV get with the exception of the big soaps.
Net product growth is 3.3million over that year as well. The vast majority of Sky Customers have Talk, Broadband and TV with Sky. This is only going to increase when Sky launches it's Mobile service later this year as well.
Customer growth last year was 506,000. Half a million people new to Sky took services in the 2015 financial year.
They even managed to INCREASE viewers watching F1 by 20% compared to 2014. The World Darts final attracted 1.7 million viewers.
But you keep hearing that hundreds of thousands of people are leaving Sky. How can the number of people be going up? How about 12-month rolling churn to 9.8%, our best performance in 11 years. That's right, less people are leaving Sky now than have done in the past 11 years.
Sky Customers downloaded movies from On Demand over 500 million times. 500,000,000 downloads. And that's just in movies. Total On Demand downloads were 1.5 BILLION. 1,500,000,000 downloads.
Six million households are registered for Sky Go. And they get that free with their TV subscription.
1.5 million Now TV Sports passes were sold last year as well. 90% of Now TV users polled (unsure of numbers) said they'd never considered Sky TV so we're not exactly losing our own customers either.
But that's not all. Customers are also happier than ever and happier with Sky than just about any other provider.
At the same time, we closed the year with our customer satisfaction scores at all-time highs. This was reflected in the latest Ofcom survey which showed Sky leading the market on customer satisfaction, with the fewest complaints across our product set.
So, despite these 'serious flaws' on their business plan, they've continued to excel, gaining more customers, losing less and generally knocking it out of the park in just about every measureable point.
I won't mention the German/Austrian and Italian businesses at this time but suffice to say, they're doing pretty well too.
All the info I've typed up is available on the http://corporate.sky.com site. None of it has been pulled from thin air. Yes, I do work for them but believe me, we do screw up sometimes. I just happen to think we're doing a pretty good job in general.
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It depends on the licence we have with the studios. Some programs are 'delete from planner' while others aren't. Some things will get removed from the Boxsets listings but remain in your planner for longer, sometimes a year or more.
Some of the boxsets are completely outwith our control as well. HBO often withhold Game of Thrones from boxsets for months after the launch of a new season for DVD/Blu-Ray sales for example.
No confirmed dates as yet, only 'this year'. Last I heard we were partnering with O2 and it'll be contracts only to begin with. No idea whatsoever on pricing etc though.
Soldato
That is exactly my point, what was relevant today, and yesterday is not going to matter tomorrow. Companies rise and fall, some manage to change, others don't and die a slow death.
So what if 3.1million people watched the lasted episode of a bought in TV show, if they don't have the next big show people will watch it some where else.
Too many fingers in too many pies, I have no objection to them doing that, but if you want to compete with the big boys the there will need to be a lot more investment for entertainment. While Sky may excel at sports, and deliver broadband well through BTs network, and might get 10 million mobile customers, how does that help people who just want a decent TV package, after all that is where Sky started.
Pure content providers will always have the upper hand, and with content delivery systems no longer needing to be a satellite dish on your wall and a box under your TV, that is what and ehy Sky need to adapt. If you chose to deny that, then I am happy for you living in your blinkered world and job, but it is fact, and its happening now.
Sky Q... a delivery system that's going to be Skys least sold and last. Unless they give it away, and change the subscription attitude.