
No Thanks
You can keep the Rupert "Ming" Murdoch empire
Sky is to enter the IPTV arena with an internet-hosted TV service of its own. The station will launch before July this year, the satellite broadcaster pledged, and it'll see many of Sky's existing channels, including Sky Movies, being streamed over the net to a range of devices. Sky promised owners of "PCs, Macs, laptops, …
Just interested here. To add Sky Sports to your package is around is £20 per month. That is £240 / year (assuming that you don't already have a basic package, which is £20/month, so double this cost if you are a new subscriber).
Divide the cost by the 10 races that are sky exclusive, and that is £24/race, or £48/race if you are not an existing customer - and i'd assume that they are targeting new / non customers at this point, so perhaps the latter is more likely.
I don't know if they would offer it more cheaply than my rather simple estimate suggests (as you won't be subsidising the football) or more expensively (as you won't be signing a contract and therefore may only spend that cash once).
or they could just run it at a loss for 3 years until they get the last of the races from the BBC and then put the price up accordingly. What do you reckon?
For me, a Sky package is not an option - I don't have a telly :)
All I watch, I stream via iPlayer/4OD/Tvcatchup - and FWIW, I do have a tv license...
I think that certainly for the first few races, they'll offer them at a loss-leading price - to tempt the terrestrial viewers.
How much would I pay - which was your question, after all - I'd go a fiver a race - maybe a tenner if it's a particularly good one, or, the start of the season - any more than that, I'm willing to wait and watch the catch ups - I became a fan in the very early 70s, when coverage was scant, at best. Towards the end of last year, I started connecting only about 3 mins before the start of the race, and ignored all the build up, it's the race that's important, all the other flim flam I can get from the net.
All the best,
The current Sky Go online package that is entertainment + sports is £35 a month.
It's a monthly contract and the season lasts 8 months.
I calculate that at £280 for the season
Assuming that you can get the basic package (£15) and add SSF1 (£10, I think on Freeview)
£25 * 8 = £200, or £20 a race, assuming Bahrain goes ahead
http://f1.sky.com/#our-new-channel
Free to Sky Sports and Sky HD customers.
Obviously if you don't currently subscribe to Sky, Sky F1 remains very expensive, since you need a £20 TV package + £10 HD pack.
Now that website is a dog and won't display properly in Opera, so I can't see if there's an option for the F1 channel only - it doesn't look like it.
I wonder how much longer they can keep charging for the HD package. Yes I'd like my HD box with a bigger HDD, but £10 a month when Freeview HD is widely available...
Compare and contrast with the BBC. Pay £150 per year for all TV, Radio, humongous Website, podcasts, free Iplayer repeats, stacks of great original content that you actually want to watch.
And the Cabinet of Millionaires wanted to sell it to their chum, the Dirty Digger that was. For the time being they can't do that.
You've got to watch the 1%, their grannies are already sold, NHS on the way. If you don't like it shout out! You won't know what you've lost till its gone.
If you have the HD package you get the F1 channel, the HD packed is an extra £10.25 if you are not currently an HD subscriber. So the costs for F1 are either £0 if you have HD or £123/year if you are not or £360/year if you are not a Sky subscriber.
Alternatively, if you have a dish you can point it at the Astra 19.2 site and watch on RTL while listing to Radio 5 Live coverage.
Expect a Sky price increase in September 2012 as they have published a freeze until then and quite a lot of content has been added in the past year, some of which is even watchable.
When I did it, they refused to do anything so I just had to play along with the cancellation and then at the last moment they finally made an offer. This was a couple of years ago, I don't have Sky anymore.
"Sky to open net telly channels to all" - Anyone know if this means 'to all' or if it's going to be restricted to UK IP addresses?
I have heard about this before... and it is one of my main gripes...they reward customers who kick up a stink more than those who just pay the bill each month. It seems like an odd way of rewarding loyal customers, by ignoring them and just giving discounts to those who shout loudest...
(not having a go at you by the way.. it is the culture at Sky that makes it worth your while to make that call every few months that annoys me...)
"Both streaming services are hindered by the limited range of material they offer to watch"
and more importnatly to many are completely useless outside areas with proper broadband speeds and low contention ratios. This will also limit Sky in this regard as it does iPlayer etc.
Long live Freeview HD (although I was perfectly happy with analogue TTV)
If they decide to offer online PPV of their 10 exclusive F1 races next year at, say, £5 a time, that's £50 they'd get from me that they won't otherwise see a penny of, as I've no intention of spending £30 a month on a Sky HD subscription just to get the F1, along with another STB and remote control that I don't want.
... Sky have said that it's sheduled for release next month, I think they underestimated how much need there was to develop an Android version first, but most companies do that nowadays. Marketing 101, look at who has the lion share of the market and develop for it first.