Satellite TV News Sky to develop Boxed sets; caution on 4k

[Ten Below]

Sky to develop Boxed sets; caution on 4k


Sky plans to further develop its Boxed Sets offering after revealing an increase of nearly 50% on the number of downloads and streams in 2013.

There will also be a refreshen of the NOW TV brand, while the Restart concept recently introduced in Italy will be extended to the UK later this year.

At Wednesday’s quarterly results Sky said that its connected TV platform has broken its own previous record, in the UK and Ireland, with almost 2 billion download and streaming requests made by its customers during 2014 – 60 requests per second.

There are now 6.5 million customers connected to Sky On Demand, and 5.8 million registered users for mobile TV service Sky Go in the UK and Ireland.

A relative latecomer to Boxed Sets, Sky now offers over 130 box sets of the latest shows.

“It’s driving take up of both Sky Go and HD and is going very well so far. Customers tell us they want quality as well as quantity, so we’ll add more of the latest best titles, and we’ll extend our licence period so they can watch for longer,” said Sky chief executive Jeremy Darroch, adding that there was an opportunity to establish Boxed Sets as a new premium offering in their own right with increased marketing support and a stronger brand identity.

Darroch knocked back the idea of a new 4k ready box – reported as Project Ethan – explaining the rate of change was different to what it was ten or even five years ago. Rather than replace the entire set-top box inventory it was more likely that changes were made to the software stack.

“Ultra HD is TBD – it does really well on big screens, but less impactful on smaller screens,” said Darroch. “The jury is still out as to how big an idea it will be, we’re thinking about the box power, how we build into the software stack and the broadcast infrastructure that goes alongside that.”

NOW TV, Sky’s pay-as-you-go service is receiving a revamped set-top, again based on the Roku platform, in which Sky has a small investment. It will also receive a new logo and an above the line advertising campaign.

Sky has made NOW TV a distinctive product; 80% of NOW TV users have never considered a Sky subscription.

The AdSmart platform is also being developed; customers in the UK will start to see tailored promotions as well as the subsitutional ads based on segments such as market groups and postcodes.

Of the international markets, Italy with a higher number of connected boxes is more likely to see the service ahead of Germany.

 

[Banny]

That was always going to happen the soon everything will be internet IPTV, Phone, Computer - ultimately will all be subscription/internet services.

I remember back when the Internet was not as mainstream as it is now, the latter part of the 1990's (sheet showing my age now), even back then MS was planning to make MS Office an internet based application with a hope to ultimately doing away with the desktop version.

In my opinion, this was to ensure they did not loose out on as much money to piracy as the only protection they had back then was CD Keys but so I am told keys such as 1111 - 1111 - 1111 and 1234-5678-91011 worked, not that I used them ofc just heard from the rumor mill.

At the time, I thought this was a crazy idea internet was slow, not many people had access and internet technologies were no were near advanced enough for this to be a possibility - HTML was coded in Notepad and the most complex structure was supported by html was 'frames', there was no java, php, asp or WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) Applications. We are not quite at the point where office is only available online, but this could very well be the case in the near future.

The problem now is that the main backbone of the internet could not handle all the services, if everyone was to switch to Internet based alternative for viewing, phone calls and general browsing. In my opinion although usage of Satellite will almost cease to exist, it is still the fastest point to point communication service that can get a message from point A to B and doesn't have to used a set route. This being the original reason for the military designing TCP/IP and SMTP, so that messages can still get through even if parts of the world and parts of the main internet backbone was destroyed.

End of my rant/opinion***

 

[deltec]

sky is rubbish any way never watch it realy soner it gos the beter:bb:

 

[Banny]

The whole deal is rubbish, what I mean is wait longer for the TV Shows, which S*y usually buy for S*y Drama, Atlantic or One channels which are bundled with the more expensive packages (sport, porn and movies aside) so pay more for the TV, we pay more for subscriptions we also pay more for the devices in the first place, computer games, clothes. Yet some how, they manage to get court orders etc to force the UK ISP's to block certain sites.

If they want to impose their restrictions on us then we should get goods and services at the same price, taking it to the next level if they dropped their prices to a reasonable level, it would then make all attempts at 'pirate' TV, games software, replica clothing and consoles unfeasible as the risk+effort involved would make it a unworthy exercise.

 

[Ten Below]

Sky to develop Boxed sets; caution on 4k


Sky plans to further develop its Boxed Sets offering after revealing an increase of nearly 50% on the number of downloads and streams in 2013.

There will also be a refreshen of the NOW TV brand, while the Restart concept recently introduced in Italy will be extended to the UK later this year.

At Wednesday’s quarterly results Sky said that its connected TV platform has broken its own previous record, in the UK and Ireland, with almost 2 billion download and streaming requests made by its customers during 2014 – 60 requests per second.

There are now 6.5 million customers connected to Sky On Demand, and 5.8 million registered users for mobile TV service Sky Go in the UK and Ireland.

A relative latecomer to Boxed Sets, Sky now offers over 130 box sets of the latest shows.

“It’s driving take up of both Sky Go and HD and is going very well so far. Customers tell us they want quality as well as quantity, so we’ll add more of the latest best titles, and we’ll extend our licence period so they can watch for longer,” said Sky chief executive Jeremy Darroch, adding that there was an opportunity to establish Boxed Sets as a new premium offering in their own right with increased marketing support and a stronger brand identity.

Darroch knocked back the idea of a new 4k ready box – reported as Project Ethan – explaining the rate of change was different to what it was ten or even five years ago. Rather than replace the entire set-top box inventory it was more likely that changes were made to the software stack.

“Ultra HD is TBD – it does really well on big screens, but less impactful on smaller screens,” said Darroch. “The jury is still out as to how big an idea it will be, we’re thinking about the box power, how we build into the software stack and the broadcast infrastructure that goes alongside that.”

NOW TV, Sky’s pay-as-you-go service is receiving a revamped set-top, again based on the Roku platform, in which Sky has a small investment. It will also receive a new logo and an above the line advertising campaign.

Sky has made NOW TV a distinctive product; 80% of NOW TV users have never considered a Sky subscription.

The AdSmart platform is also being developed; customers in the UK will start to see tailored promotions as well as the subsitutional ads based on segments such as market groups and postcodes.

Of the international markets, Italy with a higher number of connected boxes is more likely to see the service ahead of Germany.

 

[Banny]

That was always going to happen the soon everything will be internet IPTV, Phone, Computer - ultimately will all be subscription/internet services.

I remember back when the Internet was not as mainstream as it is now, the latter part of the 1990's (sheet showing my age now), even back then MS was planning to make MS Office an internet based application with a hope to ultimately doing away with the desktop version.

In my opinion, this was to ensure they did not loose out on as much money to piracy as the only protection they had back then was CD Keys but so I am told keys such as 1111 - 1111 - 1111 and 1234-5678-91011 worked, not that I used them ofc just heard from the rumor mill.

At the time, I thought this was a crazy idea internet was slow, not many people had access and internet technologies were no were near advanced enough for this to be a possibility - HTML was coded in Notepad and the most complex structure was supported by html was 'frames', there was no java, php, asp or WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) Applications. We are not quite at the point where office is only available online, but this could very well be the case in the near future.

The problem now is that the main backbone of the internet could not handle all the services, if everyone was to switch to Internet based alternative for viewing, phone calls and general browsing. In my opinion although usage of Satellite will almost cease to exist, it is still the fastest point to point communication service that can get a message from point A to B and doesn't have to used a set route. This being the original reason for the military designing TCP/IP and SMTP, so that messages can still get through even if parts of the world and parts of the main internet backbone was destroyed.

End of my rant/opinion***

 

[deltec]

sky is rubbish any way never watch it realy soner it gos the beter:bb:

 

[Banny]

The whole deal is rubbish, what I mean is wait longer for the TV Shows, which S*y usually buy for S*y Drama, Atlantic or One channels which are bundled with the more expensive packages (sport, porn and movies aside) so pay more for the TV, we pay more for subscriptions we also pay more for the devices in the first place, computer games, clothes. Yet some how, they manage to get court orders etc to force the UK ISP's to block certain sites.

If they want to impose their restrictions on us then we should get goods and services at the same price, taking it to the next level if they dropped their prices to a reasonable level, it would then make all attempts at 'pirate' TV, games software, replica clothing and consoles unfeasible as the risk+effort involved would make it a unworthy exercise.