Sky dishes up iPlayer-style service for Xbox 360 Microsoft has signed a deal with Sky that’ll see the broadcaster’s programmes available on your Xbox 360. Sky_player_005 Sky Player brings the broadcaster's TV shows, movies and sports coverage to your Xbox 360 Described as the world’s first service enabling “premium live television to be watched through a games console”, …
So So So So So So glad I a) have got an xbox360 and b) got rid of VM for Sky!
This is something I will use having multi-room and the 360 is in the "attic" gaming/spare room it now means I can watch Sky without having to get a dish wired up there when I can just use hardware that is already working on the 'net fine.
Thanks Sky. (Never thought I would say that)
When will Sky realise that they need to do this kind of thing just to keep up, never mind charge extra for it? Some of the more savvy companies are realising that they need to continually reengage with their customers to make sure they keep on handing over their cash... This should be considered as a promotional tool or brand enhancement, not an 'optional extra' like leather trim or alloys on a car. Really, for the price you have to pay for a Multiroom subscription, this should really be a free value added service - not come with its own separate price tag just to use it.
"All live content will be streamed in standard definition, while on-demand content will be sent over in "DVD quality", Sky said."
This sounds like it would be a missed opportunity, this would be an excellent way for people to get HD content without having to buy any new hardware, or pay extortionate installation fees*.
*note to Virgin, if you want more people to actually use HD, charging them £150 for the privelige of an engineer turning up and swapping out your old box for a new one in 10 seconds is just silly.
The PS3 has a gadget to watch TV and record it so this is not quite the first it is made out to be. You can also use the BBC Iplayer.
I don't want to start a row over which is better, just to pont out that its not quite the "revolution" the article seems to make out.
You mean it isn't free* as on my Wii's iPlayer service?
It's a shame that football is popular, I suspect the world would be a better place without it, though of course the poor footballers would have to get proper jobs and make do with less money than SKY can extract from it's subscribers.
Still, I suppose I shouldn't complain too much since I don't use SKY anyway - I spend my evenings enjoying playing 'Plants vs Zombies' or 'Fallout 3', rather than wasting my time on the TV**.
ttfn
*I pay my TV license so it's not totally free, I mean that there is no additional cost
**ever since the 'Paris Air Show' turned out to be something other that what I was thinking.
We've got a dish but I've got freesat wired up- not paying a monthly sub! So the ability to watch a bit of footy will be nice BUT...
i) only if the games cost a few quid each. Anything over a fiver is a no no.
ii) only if they get the bandwidth sorted. I don't want any of this "unprecedented demand" claptrap when the system crashes for the first few weeks.
iii) and only if the picture isn't pixelated to hell. Footy looks notoriously poor as an SD signal on a HD telly as it is- compress it too much and it'll look even worse.
So this announcement is pretty meaningless atm as it doesn't deal with any of the issues that will be important- especially price!
You also have to add on the cost of the large chunk of bandwidth for downloading a film, not many ISP's do packages that aren't capped so the cost of using the service is additional and quantifiable and probably doesn't come cheap.
Also, the cost of the service will do doubt include Sky's bandwidth costs for the delivery of said service. What does this mean if Sky is your ISP, are you paying twice?
You will be paying Sky to deliver the service to you and also paying Sky for you to receive it.
Fair?
Besides, Watching a game of footie with your virtual mates in a virtual stadium!?!?!
It seems to me they are saying "don't bother going around to your mates house to watch the game, everyone sit in their own house, each pay us to watch the match, and we will allow you to interact via our geh avatar system. Want to cheer? no need, just press "X""
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! HAS NO ONE WATCHED W.A.L.L.e???
How does that Microsoft Points thing work?
Presumably Microsoft takes a cut off the top when selling you points. I notice 100 points are $1.25, so I guess it's a 25 cents on the dollar?
I notice they sell them in blocks of 500, so that 79 point song is actually 83 points unless you keep buying (39500 points needed to achieve the 79 point thing).
So is the Sky thing on the same points system?
What's that, Mr Murdoch? You want more of my money for shoddy repeats (on multiple channels), adverts (on every channel), a complete absence of programming quality and a game that's been inflated out of the financial reach of most ordinary people by ... oh, you?
How about you give me something back first?
Disclaimer: My flatmates out-voted me and got Sky. I'm so ashamed.
I recently looked at the sky player stuff as I would rather stream TV than wait in for six million years for an engineer to come out to plug a box into my wall. You get fuck all...I don't watch sports and the rest of the channel list is piss poor. You get all the sports, UK Gold some kids channels and MTV...that's it...Not even sky fucking one...For £15 a month!! or a tenner if you already subscribe to sky but don't have their top broadband or multi room. Fucking rip off.
I would imagine this would follow the pricing of the Sky Player PC application.
On demand shows are free for a certain period if you subscribe to that particular mix.
Live streaming is available if you have a multiroom subscription.
"Not that this matters, if you have a PS3, you can use SkyPlayer"
Can you? I thought that Sky Player used Silverlight.
And the premium on-demand programmes are only currently available through the PC application.
... or a complete let down.
What I'm hoping for is for them to provide something for non-sky subscribers. I don't have sky at home since they won't come and install at our house (too high) and since we live in the sticks(TM) and can only just about get channels 1-4 on analogue and no digital (don't even joke about cable) my tv options are fairly limited. If they would let me subscribe and just use the 360 it would be great. Hell I'll accept just buying content one at a time it would still be better than nothing (as long as its priced reasonably)
Want: Access to Sky Sports (only for the Ashes)
Do not want: Having to pay for installation, 12 month subscription, dish etc etc...
Deffo do not want: Having to pay Murdoch any more than the bare minimum
Sounds brilliant - rush it out though, before the Aussies crush us...
It could almost be good if they used some sort of 3D visualisation thing to figure out where all the players were on the pitch and displayed them as virtual players in a virtual stadium with your virtual friends. While keeping it all pretty much photo-realistic (you'd need a powerful computer serverside to do this). Do the same with microphones and sound and you'd be able to be "sat" anywhere in the stadium.
You'd probably find that it would be hailed as a revolution in football viewing and people would rush out and buy it. Do it on a stereoscope-enabled PC or PS3 (I don't think the 360's getting a stereo solution, is it?) and get your mates to spill stuff over your back for 90 minues and it'd almost be like being there!
Does this post make the idea unpatantable? Bugger, no-one'll use it...
PS3 supports DLNA and Flash9 in the browser, so you can't use SkyPlayer (like you can use BBC iPlayer or Hulu), but you can view Sky Player via a PC using the DLNA link (the PC needs to run intermediatery software). That's how I use it, and have been for the last year or so. It's a little clunky, but it is reliable, and works well once setup.
Going back the the Xbotch thing. This does not sound that great. It seems you will be paying Sky AND Microsoft (as it's a XBL Gold feature), so unless you fancy throwing down £50 a month for the Sky Sports package and Xbox Live access, it's a pretty bad deal personally. At least the PS3 setup I mentioned above, you only need the Sky subs...
Still it's not unlike Microsoft to blast every news site on the planet with a press release about their latest polished turd.
I’ve got SKY, not because I want it but because the alternatives are crap, well, used to be crap. SKY is beginning to face some real challenges to what was essentially a monopoly, granted you always had the choice of viewing terrestrial TV with crappy reception.
My big complaint with SKY is in the way they broadcast, sorry re-broadcast, a lot of channels in 4:3 format, while a quick flick over to terrestrial TV show that the original is in widescreen format. It seems that If I want to watch widescreen I’ve to upgrade to SKY HD. I recently asked some bimbo selling SKY in a shopping centre and it seems I can have a “free” upgrade to SKY HD, all as I have to do is to subscribe to SKY HD, pay an increase in my monthly subscription, and then pay an “installation fee” of €99.99 for an “engineer” to come out to my house and plug in the new box. Amazing how it works out at €99.99 and not say €98.56 or €102.17 Oh! and I get to keep my old sky box. Would I like to “upgrade” to multi-room? Only costs €99.99 for an “engineer” to come out to my house and plug in the new box and an increase in my monthly subscription – bollocks to that.
FFS, I’m trying to reduce my costs not increase then!!!!! If I have any more assaults on my pay-packet then SKY is next for the chop, there are attentive suppliers now, and even free to view satellite.
So I’m with Christopher Woods on this, instead of SKY trying screw more money out of hard pressed customers SKY should be offering these extra services as product differentiators, if I am faced with a choice of SKY and another operator who will show widescreen and bundle broadband an/or telephone in a more cost effective package then SKY will be the looser (only SKY satellite where I am).
And I don’t even have to have friends over to watch TV, I can have virtual online friends. Nothing new in that either, there are a couple of stations where you can have virtual sex as well…… All as you have to do is ring a premium telephone number
Paris, who knows how to screw money from video production.
Typical braindead Sky and Xbox customers probably dont care or dont understand the issues.
They will lap this up in droves till they realise they are now spending 100quid/month on the combined Sky/MS Live/Broadband services, and still have no more functionality than a freeview PVR.
Just wondering how Sky have managed to get the rights to play football live over broadband?
Thought BT Vision had the broadband rights for near live coverage of the premier league games.
Not sure how they can claim to be able to show this on the XBOX when this is clearly delivered via broadband.
Unless they are fudging the rights issue by offering this only to Sky Customers and pretending this is a multiroom proposition - in which case all you people who can't get cable or have a dish won't be able to watch it anyway.
LOL, what an idiot. PS3 is outselling the 360...
22m PS3's in 30 months in US (26 in Europe) = 900,000 a month globally on average (calculated by spliting the release dates)
28m 360's in 42 months = 660,000 a month globally on average.
Both sales numbers were from end-of-year reports back in April. Since then, Microsoft have sold another 2m globally, and the PS3 will be around the same.
As for this "news"/PR spin, It's not like you can't already get these services on PS3 (and more like iPlayer and CatchupTV for free), or the much superior PlayTV which can actually record whilst you are playing a game.
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