The End of the Satellite Dish

[Ricardodaforce]

Sky plans to make all its channels and content available online, meaning customers will no longer need a satellite dish on their property.

Sky called the move a "major development" that would reduce costs and allow it to enter new markets.

It hopes that making its hundreds of channels more widely available will increase both revenue and profits.

Italy will be its first market to get all Sky channels online, followed by Austria, with the UK expected to follow later this year or in 2019.

The move will allow properties that cannot have a dish to get Sky, a spokesperson said. Customers will still need a Sky box, however.

Story here.

 

[Mr Bump]

Sounds to me like they have had a quote for the replacement/upgrade to their satellite and don't fancy it.
massive cost savings to them as they will then use your broadband to deliver the service.

 

[Ricardodaforce]

Sounds to me like they have had a quote for the replacement/upgrade to their satellite and don't fancy it.
massive cost savings to them as they will then use your broadband to deliver the service.

They use more than one satellite. They will save a lot of money on installers though!

 

[MatBin]

I live in a conservation area, so dishes arent allowed, wont be signing up to online content either.

 

[Mr Bump]

I would chew my own nuts off rather than give SKY 1p of my cash.

 

[Mountkeen]

I would chew my own nuts off rather than give SKY 1p of my cash.

+ 1

 

[Tringa]

This is fine if you have a good broadband speed. There are still quite a few places with such a low speed that streaming TV isn't an option.

Dave

 

[neil_g]

Great. It's a good job the whole country has decent Internet infrastructure.........

 

[AHILL]

I would chew my own nuts off rather than give SKY 1p of my cash.

so when talk talk screws up your broadband again you wont just lose internet you will also lose the other entertainment "tv too! Oh dear like that's gonna happen" :banghead:

DAB radio is online too because it doesn't work properly north of Watford! so you will lose that too.
All entertainment sources will be unavailable due to just one connection fault.
What do we do then "pull our plonkers"?
they will still expect payment for their service too.

 

[KIPAX]

No cable here so my only option has ever been sky dish.. cannot get any other company or fibre internet.. sky and slow broadband (my 4g phone is faster)

 

[mikew]

Just how broad is broad band?

 

[JonathanRyan]

Great. It's a good job the whole country has decent Internet infrastructure.........

Well I'll be able to get Sky because I have really fast Virgin Media Fibre. Oh, hang on........

 

[chrism_scotland]

I wouldn't be surprised to see it offered only to Sky Fibre Customers, similar to Sky Q Currently, BT do the same thing BT TV only available to BT Broadband customers.
Its quite smart I guess to try and get folk to have everything with them.

 

[viv1969]

It's an option to lose the dish...not a given for existing customers at this point.

 

[noneforit]

Presumably if it uses your internet, its going to rob some of your bandwidth to actually stream the channels?

I get 70Mbps down which is great but how much would I lose if I were watching something in 4K for example?

What If I am watching something in 4K and then want to record something else in 4K, is that twice the bandwidth being used?

For new customers it makes sense but for those of us who already have the dish, I can't see the point.

 

[bass_junkie83]

Presumably if it uses your internet, its going to rob some of your bandwidth to actually stream the channels?

I get 70Mbps down which is great but how much would I lose if I were watching something in 4K for example?

What If I am watching something in 4K and then want to record something else in 4K, is that twice the bandwidth being used?

For new customers it makes sense but for those of us who already have the dish, I can't see the point.

4K is typically around 13Mbps I believe. A quick google and Amozon recommend having a minimum download speed of 15Mbps and Netflix say 25Mbps, I assume to give you some extra bunce to not affect other internet usage.

 

[noneforit]

4K is typically around 13Mbps I believe. A quick google and Amozon recommend having a minimum download speed of 15Mbps and Netflix say 25Mbps, I assume to give you some extra bunce to not affect other internet usage.

Not sure how well that would work with Sky Q then as you can record six programmes whilst watching a seventh.

Even with decent fibre speeds you couldn't record more than a couple of 4K programmes and watch one at the same time then.

 

[bass_junkie83]

Not sure how well that would work with Sky Q then as you can record six programmes whilst watching a seventh.

Even with decent fibre speeds you couldn't record more than a couple of 4K programmes and watch once at the same time then.

I don't know but the whole concept of skyQ disgusts me anyway. If I ever found myself at the point that I was watching so much TV that at any one time I wanted to watch seven programmes at one I would suicide myself, but that's another topic...

Surely only the program you are watching needs to be downloaded at 13Mbps, anything else that is being downloaded in the background would be throttled down to a lower rate to maintain performance of what you are viewing.

 

[Mr Bump]

Presumably if it uses your internet, its going to rob some of your bandwidth to actually stream the channels?

I get 70Mbps down which is great but how much would I lose if I were watching something in 4K for example?

What If I am watching something in 4K and then want to record something else in 4K, is that twice the bandwidth being used?

For new customers it makes sense but for those of us who already have the dish, I can't see the point.

the whole 4k thing is very valid, I have been tinkering with 4k playback on my home plex system for a few weeks and there are quite a few flavours of 4k depending on the colour depth and the bitrate etc, also what sound format is being encoded. Really good 4k can easily use 50mbs in h.265 format.

Sky are doing what they do best, telling lies.

 

[Mountkeen]

so when talk talk screws up your broadband again you wont just lose internet you will also lose the other entertainment "tv too! Oh dear like that's gonna happen" :banghead:

DAB radio is online too because it doesn't work properly north of Watford! so you will lose that too.
All entertainment sources will be unavailable due to just one connection fault.
What do we do then "pull our plonkers"?
they will still expect payment for their service too.

I quite happily live without Sky. If you absolutely HAVE to have satellite TV, there's Freesat.


[emoji41]

 

[mikew]

So when the broadband systems get more and more TV related stuff going through it will it slow down and will be be back to dial up speeds.

 

[the black fox]

o.k if the mighty sky corp says it will happen it will .but in 10 years time how the hell are we gonna know which houses are council houses

 

[gman]

Presumably if it uses your internet, its going to rob some of your bandwidth to actually stream the channels?

I get 70Mbps down which is great but how much would I lose if I were watching something in 4K for example?

What If I am watching something in 4K and then want to record something else in 4K, is that twice the bandwidth being used?

For new customers it makes sense but for those of us who already have the dish, I can't see the point.

My BT is a 70Mbps contract although I only get about 50-60Mbps. But even then I can record BT 4k, watch 4K on Netflix and be using the Internet on the computer or watching HD/4k on it also and it all seems to handle it.

However, I suspect the bit rates for the streaming videos adjusts (reduces) accordingly and it's probably subtle enough for me to not really notice.

I do notice that when I stream Netflix on the computer the quality is like SD for a few seconds and then it morphs into HD or 4k. It must start low until it can determine that there's enough bandwidth to increase the quality. Quite clever I guess.

 

[Graham]

Here in France most cable/tv telephone companies provide TV, Internet and telephone down one line, most of it mostly now fibre optic and it mostly seems to be working fine but like others have said, lose one, lose them all, in about 6-7 years we've never lost it for more than a a few hours and my o/h works from home so needs the telephone and Internet, we could have 4k but choose not to atm. As for the TV channels, happy with the quality received albeit from the street into my apartment its a copper cable, that's the only letdown.

 

[gman]

Sky might do what Virgin current does in that the broadband for the TV comes down a different line from the internet so they don't effect each other and also explains why my Virgin TV when I had it still worked (most of the time) whilst at the same time my Internet didn't (almost all of the time). It was pretty rare for both to be down at the same time so one way or another you could always watch something either on Virgin Box, Streaming via Smart TV app or on a computer/tablet.

 

[Dale.]

Will Sky have to rebrand as 'Ground' now?

 

[the black fox]

Seriously this time it strikes me as all your eggs in one basket ,total thought control for future generations ,you will totally believe the information that your fed even if it’s total propaganda . .. the world of big brother is coming and it’s coming like a express train and is becoming unstoppable . Try asking your kids or grandkids if your old enough a question .the first thing they check is the internet ... where the answer may well be correct or it may be someone’s warped point of view ... but because its on the web the kids take it as true .

 

[Nod]

Just like people took the word whichever encyclopaedias they had as gospel. Or whichever newspaper they read as telling the whole, unbiased truth.

 

[noneforit]

Sky might do what Virgin current does in that the broadband for the TV comes down a different line from the internet so they don't effect each other and also explains why my Virgin TV when I had it still worked (most of the time) whilst at the same time my Internet didn't (almost all of the time). It was pretty rare for both to be down at the same time so one way or another you could always watch something either on Virgin Box, Streaming via Smart TV app or on a computer/tablet.

Fairly sure virgin run a single cable to your house then use a splitter to separate the broadband from the telephone connection.

If there is a physical cabling issue, it will likely down both services.

If one service is down and the other up, it's likely an issue in the nearest distribution point or wherever virgins cable go into their routers and PABX equipment.

No chance will analog type broadband providers contract Openreach to run additional cables to.each properly, logistically or financially it's not an option.

Loads of junction boxes are already at capacity in terms of fibre ports without running more cables, plus plenty of houses don't have easily.accessible ducting.

 

[the black fox]

Just like people took the word whichever encyclopaedias they had as gospel. Or whichever newspaper they read as telling the whole, unbiased truth.

yes but you had the option to read other papers to define the truth .as with recent wars you could switch through channels to get at the truth .ie BBC,itv,sky,al-jazeera but what is apparent recently is everything seems to be coming under the mantle of different news media under the control of one company . mind control of the mob and no matter how hard you shout in the future you will be caught up in the frenzy

 

[gman]

Fairly sure virgin run a single cable to your house then use a splitter to separate the broadband from the telephone connection.

If there is a physical cabling issue, it will likely down both services.

If one service is down and the other up, it's likely an issue in the nearest distribution point or wherever virgins cable go into their routers and PABX equipment.

No chance will analog type broadband providers contract Openreach to run additional cables to.each properly, logistically or financially it's not an option.

Loads of junction boxes are already at capacity in terms of fibre ports without running more cables, plus plenty of houses don't have easily.accessible ducting.

I'm not sure but when they massively oversubscribed the box at the end of the street was constantly being worked on. Our Internet was down for months but the TV was fine.

 

[viv1969]

Seriously this time it strikes me as all your eggs in one basket ,total thought control for future generations ,you will totally believe the information that your fed even if it’s total propaganda . .. the world of big brother is coming and it’s coming like a express train and is becoming unstoppable . Try asking your kids or grandkids if your old enough a question .the first thing they check is the internet ... where the answer may well be correct or it may be someone’s warped point of view ... but because its on the web the kids take it as true .

Step away from the bottle. : lol:

 

[Byker28i]

Sky offers 6mb broadband where I live, I get 300mb from virgin.

 

[Marc]

but what is apparent recently is everything seems to be coming under the mantle of different news media under the control of one company

What one company would that be?

 

[4wd]

This is fine if you have a good broadband speed. There are still quite a few places with such a low speed that streaming TV isn't an option.

Dave

Round here the hills are so steep that many houses can't get terrestrial signal so have been on Sky for a while if only to get freeview since analogue TV was switched off.
There is also BB of 2MB or less in the same places, and phone signal... what's that.
It's inevitable that eventually they'll declare *everyone* can get the service online and the satellite cost will be a problem.

 

[Gremlin]

If and when it happens it will be goodbye Sky for me

 

[Mountkeen]

Round here the hills are so steep that many houses can't get terrestrial signal so have been on Sky for a while if only to get freeview since analogue TV was switched off.
There is also BB of 2MB or less in the same places, and phone signal... what's that.
It's inevitable that eventually they'll declare *everyone* can get the service online and the satellite cost will be a problem.

The geostationary satellites aren't going anywhere. Freesat is absolutely fine if you want the free-to-air channels. Nobody needs to subscribe to Sky.

 

[noneforit]

The geostationary satellites aren't going anywhere. Freesat is absolutely fine if you want the free-to-air channels. Nobody needs to subscribe to Sky.

True but it largely depends on what sort of TV you watch.

I want to be able to watch live F1 and Cricket and that needs Sky Sports. It's designed so you may as well have the full package anyway as the cost difference is minimal.

To be fair i have been on 50% off for 3 years now so £72 full sky package including sports and fibre broadband with line rental is a decent price. I am happy with that. Just call up each year, ask to leave and they keep it at 50% off [emoji106]

 

[4wd]

The geostationary satellites aren't going anywhere. Freesat is absolutely fine if you want the free-to-air channels. Nobody needs to subscribe to Sky.

They have a limited life, when replacement is due the service will be considered redundant

Just this morning someone was crowing on BBC about 95% can now get superfast BB, should try coming out to places more than a mile from any cabinets.
Another round of work has just been announced with no improvement planned so not sure how they are going to get to 100% by 2020 when it takes about two years from earliest stages.

 

[Nod]

The geostationary satellites aren't going anywhere.

Down or bang is what will eventually happen, it's only a question of time as to when one (or both) will happen.