Sky just announced some MAJOR changes

http://www.express.co.uk/life-style/science-technolo...

Interesting move around delivering the TV without a dish. I wonder if that will require customers to be on Sky Broadband as then they could potentially have more control over multi-cast.

To summarise, TV signal delivered over broadband rather than a satellite dish

Which of course BT already do for some channels. Would Sky be able to fully multicast over the BT wholesale network?

Nope.

They would use their own network and Openreach GEA Multicast - https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/products/super... This is if they choose to use multicast though, big if.

Edited by deleted (Thu 26-Jan-17 12:03:47)

Lots of unknowns, but remember Sky has data on box set deliveries and catch-up already on millions of Sky+ HD boxes, and the live element from NOW TV.

Main difference will be UHD content

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

To summarise, TV signal delivered over broadband rather than a satellite dish

So, essentially, NowTV on steroids.

I wonder if you can record what is being "broadcast" onto HDD, or will they make you watch an on-demand stream?

Sky+ HD allows recording, since it is the satellite bit stream encoded over IP

Difference would be streaming live UHD content and the cost of doing that over satellite may be driving this move

There is also the fact that Sky Q boxes will be able to record 6 simultaneous streams and record a 7th. If this isn't done using multicast and is available on other ISPs than Sky then that could be a pretty major chunk of bandwidth being used. Now TV and Sky HD aren't often going to be running that many streams at once.

But surely they can only use their own network if they only make it available to Sky broadband customers. My question was more around whether they could use multicast capabilities for their content for non-sky broadband customers.

Satellite is OK but can suffer in bad weather. Moving to broadband for delivery would potentially stabilise this but if it can only be done via Sky as the ISP then it could seriously impact the balance of the ISP market. It could be the driving factor that gets a lot of people to move to Sky ISP.

There may be more limits for the Sky Q broadband option.

Though my guess is that the market they want to corner with this, are the well off moving into the numerous London apartments that do have FTTP via people like Hyperoptic, and even then 6 UHD streams is possible, though might cause congestion issues if 15% of a 200 flat tower block start using 300 Mbps each for long periods of time e.g. 9Gbps

In reply to a post by ian72:

Satellite is OK but can suffer in bad weather. Moving to broadband for delivery would potentially stabilise this

I must admit I havent found satellite TV to be particularly unstable. In the ~20 years or so I've been using it I think the dish has only ever lost a signal 2 or 3 times (due to heavy snow on dish) and even then it was only for half an hour or so until the snow fell off.

Something that I have been predicting for 30 odd Years.

I suspect that part of Sky's motivation will be to add pressure to the Government to split Openreach from BT when the current broadband can't cope. I can foresee comments like "It works well on our Fibre network in York"

I guess it depends on how good your line of sight is in the first place. I dropped sky for a year because we had a winter with a lot of heavy rain and every time it started raining the signal would go. Got fed up and cancelled and only went back just before Xmas. I would assume it was my dish specifically but my brother had the same issues that winter about 7 miles away.

Don't trust Sky!

Sky viewers are about to lose these 12 channels as of 1st February 2017
One broadcaster claimed it is paid less by Sky now than it was 10 years ago.
The 12 channels under threat

Discovery Channel
TLC
Eurosport 1
Eurosport 2
Animal Planet
Investigation Discovery
DMAX
Discovery Turbo
Discovery Shed
Discovery Science
Discovery History
Home & Health

Edited by adslmax (Thu 26-Jan-17 19:10:40)

I guess it could also be related to dish size? They used to offer two sizes of "mini' dish and we've always been on the bigger of the two being in Scotland.

In reply to a post by ian72:

Interesting move around delivering the TV without a dish. I wonder if that will require customers to be on Sky Broadband as then they could potentially have more control over multi-cast.

I am just wondering how this will work if you are that far away from your FTTC cabinet and only get low 12 Mbps that some people are getting, good luck in them getting SkyQ to record multi Live UHD Channels, its just not going to happen.

If you watch the Sky Q Ad carefully you will notice they say that it can record up to X UHD channels and watch the extra 1 at the same time.

We currently have Multi Room with 4 HD Boxes and have had the option to move over to Sky Q for a while now, but there are loads of hidden charges like £X for each upgrade from HD box to a Q Box then there is an extra cost per month.

TBH, we haven't got any UHD TV's yet so there is no point in us moving to Sky Q here, also we haven't had any issues with our Sky boxes that use the Dish (even with heavy rain and snow) + Broadband (BT) for the on demand and catch-up content.

Also you don't own the Q Boxes, you lease them from Sky, its like VM own their boxes.
Which I think is good, that way when a box stops working they have to come out and replace it with a working one, where as with Sky at the moment if you box dies out of warrantee you will have to buy a new one at you own cost.

Paul

In reply to a post by craski:

I guess it could also be related to dish size? They used to offer two sizes of "mini' dish and we've always been on the bigger of the two being in Scotland.

Agreed, we still have the small dish, but we have a very good LNB with 8 outputs which is located at the back of our house just under our gutter.

Ours use to be at the front of our house since the start of Sky, so we have had various dishes installed including that old huge ugly white dish

But due to being in a conservation area we had to either drop sky and take the dish down or have it relocated.

I phoned Sky and explained the issue and was offered a huge price at first, so I said cancel the lot due to we was already out of contract.

I was put on hold for about 10 mins to then be offered a one off fee of £5 to have the old one taken down (front of house) and a brand new dish installed (back of the house) along with brand new twin-feeder coaxial cables installed.

I was expecting for them to add another 12 months contract, but when I asked about it, they said no and that it was a loyalty offer due to being with them for years.

When I got off the phone I was like wow.

Not bad for a fiver

Paul

I got Sky Q upgrade last week. Brand new small dish plus the LNB works differently. I don't have a requirement for as many boxes as you but Sky Q does seem to work better for me (at least at the moment - I am aware that some early adopters have had issues with it).

Have you turned off Eco as a power setting yet? Oh, and are you using it wired to your Lan or wifi?

Yep, eco is off. Main box is wired with one mini on wireless.

I have a mini but it's wired. I like the fact it supports Airplay.

Thought I'd try it wireless and so far it looks good - it replaced a 5Ghz video sender that I was using that was getting major interference, the mini is perfect.

So does this mean Sky now are confident in Openreach's network? and they might come to some agreement with BT?

Will be interesting, the reason NowTV doesn't work on BT TV is due to Sky using Unicast.

Guessing Sky may retain unicast for on demand content and adopt multicast for the live channels.

Was having this conversation not long ago where live TV, except for sporting events etc is pretty much going to dead. People want flexibility these days. Not sure where that would leave advertisers, dynamic advertising with on demand content I guess.

What makes you think they weren't confident in the OR network before?

Reality will be that just like BT Total TV with UHD is not available to everyone then Sky Q over broadband won't be, the outrage quotient will depend on pricing and if it offers other features that Sky Q over satellite does not.

It might signify a move of the confidence in VDSL2 to cover a good number, G.fast on its way and FTTP increasing in volume

OR

It could be a shrew move to add to the pressure for Openreach PLC and forcing investment in Gigabit FTTP, e.g. we have launched this product but can only sell in 2% of the UK, and this means TV is costing 98% of people more than it could be.

In reply to a post by ian72:

Yep, eco is off. Main box is wired with one mini on wireless.

Curious - I left mine in Eco mode, are there benefits to turning it off?

I looked on a few forums before getting it and generally if people have issues with the box it is usually resolved by turning off the eco setting - enough people seemed to have issues that they generally recommend turning it off anyway (plus it is a hangover from the past because I did have issues with Sky HD that were resolved by turning off the eco mode).

In reply to a post by AndyHCZ:

What makes you think they weren't confident in the OR network before?

Because of all the complaints that were being leveled at BT/OR during the Ofcom saga.

Its just interesting how they were saying how bad and unreliable OR were when dealing with problems that they now are opening up a new front that will rely in a big part on that very same OR network.

Edited by bowdon (Fri 27-Jan-17 13:39:30)

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

It could be a shrew move to add to the pressure for Openreach PLC and forcing investment in Gigabit FTTP, e.g. we have launched this product but can only sell in 2% of the UK, and this means TV is costing 98% of people more than it could be.

I hadn't thought of it this way but this does sound like the type of marketing game Sky would play. Also with the massive increase in on-demand content Sky cant afford to ignore that either and I do wonder how much of the Sky subscription charge is attributed to their primary delivery method via the satellite.

In reply to a post by ian72:

I got Sky Q upgrade last week. Brand new small dish plus the LNB works differently. I don't have a requirement for as many boxes as you but Sky Q does seem to work better for me (at least at the moment - I am aware that some early adopters have had issues with it).

Well I was under the impression no dish was required, but after some light reading it is still required.

As for us here moving over to Sky Q, not happening anytime soon, we have Amazon Prime, Netflix UHD, so no point.

Maybe I will wait for Sky Q to mature some more before I look into it again.

Paul

In reply to a post by ian72:

Brand new small dish plus the LNB works differently.

I havent seriously looked into upgrading to Sky Q yet (primarily because of cost) but also hadnt realised they need to change the dish. Mine needs scaffolding to get to it so thats another good reason for me not to upgrade.

The dish doesn't have to be changed (mine was because it was rusty) but the LNB on the arm of the dish does - so they will need access.

The cost of Sky Q is nowhere near the extra that it was a little while back. You may have to pay a bit for the box upgrade but monthly subscription is the same as with normal Sky HD.

For me, even if ever had the money for Sky Q again is that you never get to own the box, i.e. stop subscription and box is returned. At least with the old Sky+ HD you could keep box after as a FreeSat arrangement.

That is true. But, as you don't own it you don't have to pay Sky to get it fixed if (when) it goes wrong.

I never used the Sky HD for Freesat because you can't record on it unless you pay a subscription so when not with Sky I have used other boxes for either Freeview or Freesat.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

At least with the old Sky+ HD you could keep box after as a FreeSat arrangement.

Very poor indeed, Sky will disabled Sky+ feature such as live pause, rewind, fast forward and recording on FTA channels. Sky want £10 a month for this feature to be turned on.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

At least with the old Sky+ HD you could keep box after as a FreeSat arrangement.

Very poor indeed, Sky will disabled Sky+ feature such as live pause, rewind, fast forward and recording on FTA channels. Sky want £10 a month for this feature to be turned on.

And that's totally true. I dumped the sky box when I bought a TV with freesat built in. At least with a USB drive or external drive I can do all sky wanted that charge to enable

In reply to a post by ian72:

That is true. But, as you don't own it you don't have to pay Sky to get it fixed if (when) it goes wrong.

Free box replacements/service calls for out of warranty H/W or out of contract users are/were common place though, so that argument doesn't really hold up IMO.

Its an interesting one in terms of consumer rights too, don't believe it was ever fully tested.

Taking a subscription for a service where previously supplied hardware has failed is tough to justify

my linux STB is brilliant, recording without subscription and way more features than boxes sky provide.

Been there done that, but gave up on linear broadcast altogether years ago now.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

Don't trust Sky!

Sky viewers are about to lose these 12 channels as of 1st February 2017
One broadcaster claimed it is paid less by Sky now than it was 10 years ago.
The 12 channels under threat

Discovery
...
....

Sorted.

In reply to a post by AndyHCZ:

Nope.

They would use their own network and Openreach GEA Multicast - https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/products/super... This is if they choose to use multicast though, big if.

I don't see them using GEA multicast. They detest BT these days and will do everything they can to stay away from any BT Group products that they don't definitely need.

I wonder if sky's so called cost control will kick in on the next EPL deal, I expect not.