mattx Posted March 1, 2007 Posted March 1, 2007 Had to laugh this morning, I am virgin media customer - have been since the days of 'Windsor cable' Anyway this morning I checked to see what had happend and it seems Virgin have pulled the channels [ good for them ] Just out of interest I flicked over to Sky News only to have a nice message from Virgin explaining that Sky had chucked their toys our of their pram etc, but the funniest thing was that they had re-named the channel Sky Snooze........ At least they have a sense of humour of it. I don't care really, I download 24 as torrents and then take two day off... How sad am I ?? Just read that sky could loose around 60 million a year because of this - GOOD. I know that peanuts to Murdoch but anything to bite that tax haven plonker in the bum...
browolf Posted March 1, 2007 Posted March 1, 2007 yea but now sky can advertise as "more channels than cable" what other channels have you lost?
Zoom7000 Posted March 1, 2007 Posted March 1, 2007 I'm glad Virgin have done this too. It's about time someone stood up to Murdoch and his bloody self created monopoly. It's seems that someone is Mr. Branson. Also looks like this situation may not be resolved seeing as Virign have already signed up a deal to broadcast Lost. However, it'll be very surprising if we ever see 24 on Virgin exclusive TV, because 24 is made by FOX, who are owned by Mr. Branson's best mate... Rupert Murdoch![/sarcasm] The BBC are happy with the news because according to them, the biggest losers are gonna be Sky News. 8m Freeview viewers, 3.5m Cable viewers won't have it anymore, so it looks like its BBC News 24 FTW. I presume sometime in the future Virign will remove UKTV, Bravo, Ftn, etc from Sky and it'll be full blown war! Did anyone ever watch Sky Travel?
Zoom7000 Posted March 1, 2007 Posted March 1, 2007 List of Lost Channels: Sky 1, 2, 3 Sky News Sky Sports News Sky Travel Sky Travel Extra
mattx Posted March 1, 2007 Author Posted March 1, 2007 I presume sometime in the future Virign will remove UKTV, Bravo, Ftn, etc from Sky and it'll be full blown war! I hope so. Bring back Wire TV & Screen Sport !!
Geoff Posted March 1, 2007 Posted March 1, 2007 Also remember that Virgin own UKTV. So they might pull those channels from Sky.
Ric_ Posted March 1, 2007 Posted March 1, 2007 I was reading an interesting BBC News article yesterday about this and Sky have been up to some other dirty tricks (including buying 17.5% of ITV to prevent the Virgin take over). Sky will also be pulling all its channels from Freeview in a couple of months. See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6407249.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6396299.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6390655.stm (pay attention to FreeView section of this one!)
mattx Posted March 1, 2007 Author Posted March 1, 2007 Reading between the line in all this, to me Sky is nothing more than a money making empire - they seem to charge for everything they can possibly get. Taking away Freeview channels and setting up a terrestrial pay-TV service !!
Lee_K_81 Posted March 1, 2007 Posted March 1, 2007 Can't say i'll miss sky one. i never watch it, although i'm an avid 24 fan. Thank god for torrents.... i mean boxsets released in time for chirstmas. Sky are pulling this childish stunt because they cant compete with the package Virgin are offering, t.v., internet, telephone and now mobile, factor in to that the fact that satellite is an inferior recieve only technology. If we are headed for a truely tv-on-demand future, cable will be the way it will happen. Sky are having one last go at trying to grab customers by keeping the best channels and programmes for themselves, in order to play the numbers game. Anyone remember the advert a few years ago, if you dont get sky one, you dont get jack???? They just want to pull all the old posters out of storage again. I cant see Virgin pulling their channels from sky, they will take the moral high-ground on this one, especially if it goes to monopolies commision. If they loose that then maybe they will. I'll be looking for Virgin to get some decent (read: recent) programmes / series on their on-demand service tho, or maybe pass the savings on from no sky fees in better internet connection....... Maybe they could partner up with google..........
Geoff Posted March 1, 2007 Posted March 1, 2007 On a related note, Virgin Media 10mb internet customers are getting upgraded to 20mb as of June. http://library.corporate-ir.net/library/13/135/135485/items/233391/FINALVM_Q406_PressRelease.pdf As an end-to-end network owner, cable has inbuilt advantages in the quality of broadband service that we offer. Customers can receive consistent speeds no matter where they live on our network and a top speed of 10Mb is available throughout our broadband addressable areas. We will be increasing this to 20Mb in June and we are also currently conducting a residential trial of a 50Mb broadband service.
webman Posted March 1, 2007 Posted March 1, 2007 Personally I don't think Ofcom will let Sky run a pay TV service on Freeview with their current plans. Ofcom will be launching a consultation on the matter - details here.
mattx Posted March 1, 2007 Author Posted March 1, 2007 On a related note, Virgin Media 10mb internet customers are getting upgraded to 20mb as of June. You just made me VERY happy with that post Geoff, I was unaware of that. That means I will have 10x more bandwidth than the school !!
Geoff Posted March 1, 2007 Posted March 1, 2007 I will have 10x more bandwidth than the school Even if I got on the 50mbit trial I'd still be short some 950mbit of what the school has at it's disposal.
StewartKnight Posted March 1, 2007 Posted March 1, 2007 I couldn't care less, living in a rural area, people like Branson aren't bothered with the likes of us! It annoys me though that Cumbria is the 1st area to go "digital" through a roof top ariel, just as the number of channels is going to be reduced to, well, the number of channels we had before we were all forced into buying a settop box.... I can see the marketing..... "Buy a £100 settop box for all the TV's in your house to receive all the channels you had before we switched them off"
Jake Posted March 1, 2007 Posted March 1, 2007 Loving that news about the 10mb upgrade !! fantastic As for Sky v Virgin, I'm on Sky at the moment, and I really dont care if these 2 entities clash. As long as I can watch 24, Jericho (fantastic program, I actually think its better than 24 imo ), Heroes, and most importantly of all, all the scrummy live football, I'm happy
Geoff Posted March 1, 2007 Posted March 1, 2007 Virgin have a page up now to 'explain': http://allyours.virginmedia.com/fairplay/index.html
Disease Posted March 1, 2007 Posted March 1, 2007 Geoff your school has a 1GB interent connection? wow that must cost a fortune. Sure you are not getting confused with Monthly Bandwidth. I for one think it's virgin who are trying to muscle sky and it has backfired on them. This problem did not arise before Virgin took over.
Geoff Posted March 1, 2007 Posted March 1, 2007 Geoff your school has a 1GB interent connection? Yes. wow that must cost a fortune. It's provided by CLEO + Lancs LEA. It's a flat rate cost based on the number of students. I don't have the figures to hand but it works out at about £4k a year for our school IIRC.
mattx Posted March 1, 2007 Author Posted March 1, 2007 I was just about to think ' thats not many posts.....' [ on VM board ] then when I got to the bottom I saw the link of other pages.... 800 of them... http://boards.virginmedia.com/shout/haveyoursay/fairplay.html
Ric_ Posted March 1, 2007 Posted March 1, 2007 I for one think it's virgin who are trying to muscle sky and it has backfired on them. This problem did not arise before Virgin took over. You could be right but it does also coincide with the fact that Sky are now offering broadband and phone services plus the fact that Virgin offer quad-play (tv, broadband, landline, mobile). The Sky broadband package is rubbish in comparison, requiring your exchange to have the Sky LLU for decent speeds. Also, no mobile. How will Sky keep its customers... make itself the only place that you can see some of the big name shows. Don't forget that this all started several months ago when Sky bought 17.5% of ITV to prvent Virgin taking it over!
Quackers Posted March 1, 2007 Posted March 1, 2007 I presume sometime in the future Virign will remove UKTV, Bravo, Ftn, etc from Sky and it'll be full blown war! Did anyone ever watch Sky Travel? Not gonna happen. They would lose 8 Million potential viewers over night, it would cripple them to say the least. I do not know what has changed since it was rebadged Virgin Media, but my experience of NTL TV is that its gotta be the worst in the world. The remote is not layed out very well (you can use the Sky without looking no problem), the EPG is very poor, Sky's EPG really shows it up, and i've seen the interactive button make the box lock up lol, 8O . Sky have there TV system just right, with the technology NTL have they should be able to do much better since they can send signals back via the cable system very fast, Sky just has a 33.6K modem in it. but no, they have a slow, difficult to use buggy system.
Disease Posted March 1, 2007 Posted March 1, 2007 you sure as according the the Cleo webslite: Bandwidth CLEO aims to deliver bandwidth matched to your schools needs whereever possible. The DfES class a broadband connection as a minimum of 2Mb for primary schools & a minimum of 8Mb for secondary schools. All CLEO connections comply. Varies depending on cost – 2Mb & 8Mb available in some urban areas Type of bandwidth SDSL – identical bandwidth for upload and download (Min 2Mb or greater in both directions) or ADSL 2+ Annex M - 3Mb upload and upto 21Mb download. ? Max download speed is 21mb, which is about the highest ADSL in UK.
Geoff Posted March 1, 2007 Posted March 1, 2007 Yes, it's fibre for a start. That information you've pulled is hilariously out of date. In Lancs Primaries get 2 - 10mb depending on location. Secondaries usually get either 100mbit or 1Gbit again depending on location. Although I know some schools in East Lancs have slower links because they are using microwave links rather than fibre.
Zoom7000 Posted March 1, 2007 Posted March 1, 2007 Not gonna happen. They would lose 8 Million potential viewers over night, it would cripple them to say the least. That all depends on exactly how many people actually watch UKTV and other Virgin channels on Sky. I think the majority of these viewers are from Cable as opposed to Sky because Sky have a much wider range of Channels in the same Genre.
Disease Posted March 1, 2007 Posted March 1, 2007 Cool, pity they don't do that down here. Tell cleo to update their darn website. So you get a download speed of 100000kbps download speed. I am not having a go at you but I just find it hard to believe that an LEA could afford a 1gb internet pipe which is the top of the line internet connection. I can understand that you could have a 1gb fibre link back to the LEA, we have almost the same here, that is not the internet link that is only the wan link and not the actual internet speed. Our LEA have a 100mb internet connection.
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