How long can Sky charge for HD

[admin_exported]

About a year ago their were rumours that Sky were about to drop the price of their HD. There were even suggestions that the charge might be abolished altogether. As usual with these sort of rumours they remained rumours.

I wonder how long Sky can get away charging a monthly sum for something that is not costing them anything extra. After all they have HD cameras already.

I guess it is the 'how long is a piece of string' argument......... As long as they can get away with it.

 

[Anonymous]

its a rule of economics they charge what the market will bear

 

[professorhat]

Probably until they get some sort of competition. No one else really comes close to Sky's HD content.

 

[daveh75]

Very Annoyed:I wonder how long Sky can get away charging a monthly sum for something that is not costing them anything extra. Not sure how you come to that conclusion!!!!

Broadcasting in HD uses significantly more bandwidth than SD,which means HD channels take up more transponder space on a satellite than SD,therefore less channels can fit on any particular transponder.

Because of this,the cost rises for each broadcaster, and therefore want a bigger slice of the Sky subscriptions to cover their costs.

In short, i dont see the HD sub being dropped anytime soon.

 

[robjcooper]

Totally with you there daveh. Apart from the increase in transmission costs, the post production of HD material also costs a lot more than SD. (for example, a Sony Digital Betacam vtr is available for between £8 - 20K. A Sony HDcamSR vtr costs in the region of £80-90K. Even if material is played to air off a server, you'll still have to have at least one of these machines to ingest the material. As for the tape stock costs - £300 for a 2 hour HDCamSR tape. Someone has to pay for these increased costs and you, dear consumer, is that someone - as James Murdoch believes profit comes before creativity, then he's not going to subsidise it!

Rob

 

[Anonymous]

Besides all of that the actual charge for HD is just £10 a month on top of your package subscription. Hardly going to break anybodys bank really is it?

 

[D.J.KRIME]

For people who don't think the extra £10 is worth it obviously don't watch any sport and most probibly also moan about paying their liecence fee!

 

[harveymt]

I look at it this way. This year, the economy being what it is, I haven't bought a single DVD or Blu-ray. I watch everything on Sky and the HD movies and sport mean I don't feel Im missing on anything. Throw in all the series I've watched on Sky1 HD and FX HD and I think £10 is fair enough.

 

[fido87456]

They'll charge for it for as long as enough people are prepared to pay it...

 

[Andy Madden]

and as long as they have all the content and zero competition...

 

[daveh75]

Andy Madden:and zero competition...That's supposedly going to change early next year though....

A third satellite platform(Real digital tv) is meant to be "soft launching" in the early part of next year, and will have both free and pay tv content, kind of bridging the gap between Freesat and Sky.

Have to say though i remain sceptical at present, mainly because of Rapture TV/David Henry's involvement.Which is who is behind/backing Realdigital.

And secondly their choice of STB, Fortec Star STB's are some of the worst on the market IMHO.......

 

[Big Aura]

Andy - you forget about Freesat! They've got BBC HD (antiques roadshow, Gavin and Stacy, er.... Jonafon Woss) and ITV HD (a couple of footie matches every 6 weeks).

Sky are skating on thick ice...

 

[harveymt]

There always seems to be someone ready to take down Sky but I've yet to see anyone come close yet. Sky seem to be prepared to spend the money to launch biggger and better services so why should they not have the right to charge for it?

 

[tvspecv]

i wonder what other countries charge for these type of services i.e japan china etc their broadband etc are much faster than the uk i dont think they pay as much

 

[daveh75]

tvspecv:i wonder what other countries charge for these type of services i.e japan chinaDont know about Japan and China,though throughout europe most satellite tv packages are significantly cheaper,but on the other hand most dont have anywhere near the same amount of content as Sky.

 

[digigriffin]

I think the first £10 that will be dropped will be that on any multiroom Sky+HD.

Its a complete rip-off to be charged the HD subscription a second time on a second sky+HD as multiroom.
You already pay £10 for the multiroom so it should carry all channels on your subscription including HD ones!

 

[The_Lhc]

digigriffin:I think the first £10 that will be dropped will be that on any multiroom Sky+HD.

Its a complete rip-off to be charged the HD subscription a second time on a second sky+HD as multiroom.
You already pay £10 for the multiroom so it should carry all channels on your subscription including HD ones!

Ah, I was going to ask about that, that's annoying, I was going to go HD in my second room once I've replaced the CRT in there. Odd really as you don't have to pay any extra if you have ESPN it's just mirrored onto your multi-room box, whereas with Setanta you had to pay extra (it was only a quid or so but still...).

I'll hold off in that case, I'm paying quite enough now as it is.

 

[oldleodensian]

D.J.KRIME:For people who don't think the extra £10 is worth it obviously don't watch any sport and most probibly also moan about paying their liecence fee!

Sky sports HD actually costs £28 (£18 sports pacakage and £10 HD) per month, or £336 per year.

As this has to be added to a minimum £18 package, that's £46 per month or £552 per year.

I don't moan about licence fee and love sport but i will not pay £552 for the privelege.

Not everyone thinks Sky is wonderful.

 

[Anonymous]

oldleodensian:Sky sports HD actually costs £28 (£18 sports pacakage and £10 HD) per month, or £336 per year

You don't have to take the whole sports package though. I chose just sky sports 1 as that has most premiership football and the Ashes series. For what I enjoy watching I would never use sky sports 2 and 3 so why pay for it?

 

[The_Lhc]

oldleodensian:D.J.KRIME:For people who don't think the extra £10 is worth it obviously don't watch any sport and most probibly also moan about paying their liecence fee!

Sky sports HD actually costs £28 (£18 sports pacakage and £10 HD) per month, or £336 per year.

Well it's not quite that cut and dried is it? The £10 gets you the other HD channels as well, so you can't say it's all for Sky Sports HD.

 

[mikey2008]

Absolutely 110% agree with this. Double HD multiroom is a kick in the teeth to customers. It surely can't continue!

 

[oldleodensian]

the_lhc:oldleodensian:D.J.KRIME:For people who don't think the extra £10 is worth it obviously don't watch any sport and most probibly also moan about paying their liecence fee!

Sky sports HD actually costs £28 (£18 sports pacakage and £10 HD) per month, or £336 per year.

Well it's not quite that cut and dried is it? The £10 gets you the other HD channels as well, so you can't say it's all for Sky Sports HD.

Obviously the £10 HD fee also allows access to other channels, as does the rest of the sky package deal. The point being made was how expensive it is for HD sports and that people who do not want to pay for subscription tv are not all sports-free homes.

 

[Anonymous]

I think there is another issue regards HD which is this.

Now they are no longer making CRT TV's, you have to have either a LCD or Plasma TV. And quite frankly unless you have HD I don't think much of the technology on SD.

So unless you have HD, in my opinion you will have a worse picture than you used to have under CRT and analogue. That is a march backwards in terms of technology. TV is no longer a technology that all can enjoy, it is now becoming a luxury that many simply can't afford.

And if you can't afford HD, and have an LCD TV with SD then sorry, you will have a picture that is not as good as you would have got twenty years ago. That is not a move forward.

 

[professorhat]

To be fair though, it's not the technology which is at fault, but the application of the technology. I'm positive an LCD or Plasma TV which was designed to display a PAL signal would look just as good as the old CRT TVs. The issue is, these new sets are not designed for this, they're designed to display HD pictures and thus SD signals have to be upscaled and picture quality suffers as a result. And it's the likes of the US and Japan which are driving manufacturers to produce HD sets. These markets already have mature HD broadcasts available to them meaning ordinary folk there are demanding HD sets and as a byproduct, we're getting these sets too.

Without this though, I'm pretty sure progress wouldn't occur - after all, why would anyone in the UK go to the expense of making and broadcasting HD signals if no one had sets ready to receive them?

 

[mikey2008]

professorhat:

To be fair though, it's not the technology which is at fault, but the application of the technology. I'm positive an LCD or Plasma TV which was designed to display a PAL signal would look just as good as the old CRT TVs. The issue is, these new sets are not designed for this, they're designed to display HD pictures and thus SD signals have to be upscaled and picture quality suffers as a result. And it's the likes of the US and Japan which are driving manufacturers to produce HD sets. These markets already have mature HD broadcasts available to them meaning ordinary folk there are demanding HD sets and as a byproduct, we're getting these sets too.

Without this though, I'm pretty sure progress wouldn't occur - after all, why would anyone in the UK go to the expense of making and broadcasting HD signals if no one had sets ready to receive them?

Good points Prof, although I think 75% of the general public have no idea what they're buying into when it comes to HD, which I think is more of a problem. Most people think that they're receiving HD pictures even though they've got an SD input.