Virgin Media(ex-Telewest/NTL) Pulls plug on Sky News, Sky One etc

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Sky claimed their price-rise was 'justified' but I have not seen an independent body confirm this yet. Until then Virgin have my support. I would love something like Sky Plus but I've got used to life without that.

I don't know of any essential TV shows on Sky channels - but then I download more and more ad-free TV shows. For people who still enjoy The Simpsons, how far behind are Channel 4 in showing new episodes anyway?

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 09:57 (seventeen years ago) link

A good few series? Though they haven't shown any new ones for a few weeks.

The messages on the ditched channels right now are pretty fucking childish. If they had smarts they'd have just got Richard Branson to reprise the bit from The Simpsons where Mr Burns takes over TV in an attempt to get Bobo back. I think people would dig that

― DJ Mencap, Thursday, 1 March 2007 10:04 (seventeen years ago) link

or just a screen grab of billionaire tyrant Murdoch with added horns and flames around him, crying children below

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 10:07 (seventeen years ago) link

Channel 4 are four years/series behind Sky One with new eps. of The Simpsons.

I don't know of any essential TV shows on Sky channels

"Essential" is, of course, debatable, but Sky One also has:

Lost
24
Battlestar Galactica
Weeds
Nip/Tuck
The 4400
Bones
Rescue Me
and the commissioned stuff, like "Hogfather"

― Ben Boyerrr, Thursday, 1 March 2007 10:28 (seventeen years ago) link

all those shows being American, of course.

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 10:37 (seventeen years ago) link

isn't it something like: branson wanted to have a controlling share in itv and murdoch blocked him and branson told everyone that it was bad how much power murdoch had and that the government should stop him and murdoch priced branson out of including his channels?

― RJG, Thursday, 1 March 2007 10:42 (seventeen years ago) link

As of now, all of Sky One's Brit shows are "reality" (e.g. Brainiac, Crash Test Dummies, Cirque de Celebrite, The Match, Project Catwalk, etc.) except for "Dream Team." "Hex" was their biggest commission but didn't rate outside of a devoted cult.
Sky One is fundamentally acquistions-based.

― Ben Boyerrr, Thursday, 1 March 2007 10:43 (seventeen years ago) link

pretty much. it's a rich powerful man standing up to and trying to compete with an even richer, more powerful man. lesser of two evils thing really.

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 10:44 (seventeen years ago) link

Of course Sky have gambled on British comedy in the past (Time Gentlemen Please, Jumpers For Goalposts, that Harry Enfield thing)...hmm, no wonder they gave up.

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 10:45 (seventeen years ago) link

don't think anyone can really blame murdoch, then, and no-one can think branson wasn't being foolish

― RJG, Thursday, 1 March 2007 10:45 (seventeen years ago) link

Branson is trying to compete directly with Sky, why on earth would Murdoch even consider giving him a leg up?

― Matt DC, Thursday, 1 March 2007 10:48 (seventeen years ago) link

We get free Sky! Everyone round to mine to screw Murdoch!

― tissp, Thursday, 1 March 2007 10:51 (seventeen years ago) link

pretty much. it's a rich powerful man standing up to and trying to compete with an even richer, more powerful man. lesser of two evils thing really.

Innit, Virgin seem to be under the misconception that I give a fuck which multinational corporation I hitch my tiny wagon to for the purposes of making my life marginally less depressing

― DJ Mencap, Thursday, 1 March 2007 10:52 (seventeen years ago) link

Why should Sky be allowed to increase their fee for other companies to include their channels?

In the interests of fair competition perhaps this should not have been permitted by whoever handles these things (Oftel types).

Oftel ordered BT to allow other companies to compete with them fairly by making them charge less for use of their network. Someone should be making sure the same is done with Sky. Sky have already lost ground on their monopoly of live football coverage at least.

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 10:56 (seventeen years ago) link

Haven't Sky already been slapped for the reverse--i.e. told that they had to carry ITV's channels?

― tissp, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:01 (seventeen years ago) link

sky channels can't really be compared to bt's network

― RJG, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:01 (seventeen years ago) link

the point is that like BT they have the most power

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:03 (seventeen years ago) link

because people want to watch their channels?

― RJG, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:04 (seventeen years ago) link

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:04 (seventeen years ago) link

Isn't the stuff about Branson a bit of a red herring?
NTL bought Virgin mobile and off the back of that the rights to call themselves Virgin Media rather than NTL. They probably thought the name change would do them good since NTL had a horrendous reputation for customer service.
I'm sure that Branson has a share in the new company but I'm also pretty sure that he has pretty little to do with the day to day running of it.

Sky's recent announcements regarding their freeview channels should tell you everything you need to know about the way they do business.

― treefell, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:06 (seventeen years ago) link

no?

― RJG, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:06 (seventeen years ago) link

Steve I think the amount Sky were charging Virgin is a red herring here - Sky weren't going to let Virgin carry their channels whatever happened and hiking up the price makes it look like Virgin's fault.

― Matt DC, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:07 (seventeen years ago) link

NTL was Branson's plan B after failing to get ITV. Sky sort of 'forced' him to compete directly with them by outbidding him on ITV? Jolly clever of them I suppose.

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:08 (seventeen years ago) link

(Branson is the largest single shareholder in the new Virgin Media fwiw)

― Matt DC, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:08 (seventeen years ago) link

This is all a bit like Man Utd getting huffy with Chelsea for having too much money.

― Matt DC, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:09 (seventeen years ago) link

Sky have already lost ground on their monopoly of live football coverage at least.

That will be where 3 channels now carry it, forcing people to pay 3 seperate fees, which of course will end up being more than the £50 season ticket we get just now?

Cheers for that.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:12 (seventeen years ago) link

I don't know how you can all stand it, tbh. "jump through this hoop. Now this one." etc

― Pashmina, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:18 (seventeen years ago) link

At the end of the day, football's the winner.

― Matt DC, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:18 (seventeen years ago) link

Sky weren't going to let Virgin carry their channels whatever happened and hiking up the price makes it look like Virgin's fault.

maybe so. but then perhaps Branson is just playing them at their own game by forcing things in this way. if it means another company has more chance to operate and compete at Sky's level then surely that's a good thing in the long-term. obv. it's a massive gamble in short-term because people will switch to Sky for the American imports. i don't know how Branson's planning to deal with that but it's a bit exciting at least.

RJG it's not as simple as that. expanding on things beyond one sentence...why do people want to watch Sky stuff? because they have far more power than their 'rivals' and can throw cash to get what they want, and they'll pay more for all those desirable US imports. but surely there's a line to cross before this becomes an unfair advantage or in some respects a monopoly.

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:19 (seventeen years ago) link

I find it hard to believe Ofcom will go along with the idea of having two distinct and competing pay-for-DTT offerings possibly requiring different boxes (Freeview+TopUpTV vs. whatever Sky wants to cook up).

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:23 (seventeen years ago) link

well DTT is available through Homechoice box as well as Freeview, Virgin/NTL and Sky Digital/Plus no? plus (unsupported) Tivo?

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:25 (seventeen years ago) link

Wait ha sorry. I thought DTT just meant digital terrestrial television, which is what I thought Freeview was.

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:27 (seventeen years ago) link

[Removed Illegal Image]

But rightly or wrongly this is pretty much how it works in every single industry in the world!

― Matt DC, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:30 (seventeen years ago) link

sorry yes, Freeview are the only ones actually supplying it as DTT. The others use cable or satellite to carry those same traditional terrestrial/otherwise analogue channels.

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:31 (seventeen years ago) link

(Tivo's only a recorder. might be different in the states but here it's just a pvr. they were originally Sky branded, before Sky did the Sky+ thing, but you needed an external box.)

― koogs, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:33 (seventeen years ago) link

But Matt it would be like having to have two separate DAB radios just to hear all the stations! Traditionally, this kind of thing has not worked in the marketplace and I think Ofcom would be doing everyone a favour by prohibiting it.

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:34 (seventeen years ago) link

We are one of the few countries not to have multiple commercial platforms on each broadcast platform. Most other european countries have at least two satellite operators and differeing numbers of DTT pay TV platforms although most other countries didn't allow a a non CI based encryption system like what sky has as well.

It also didn't help the BSB's technology was superior but more expensive that Sky's back when both platforms launched in the late 80s, nor that neither tech was interoperable meaning that you had to repurchase/reinstall equipment if you wanted to switch.

― Ed, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:35 (seventeen years ago) link

cool i wasn't sure whether they were also receivers.

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:35 (seventeen years ago) link

BSB = Betamax

lol 'squariels'

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:36 (seventeen years ago) link

Matt by the way I hope you realize that breaking the law to prove your point isn't impressing anyone.

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:37 (seventeen years ago) link

The squariel concept was pretty good but it is interesting that no one else has ever used the concept.

― Ed, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:40 (seventeen years ago) link

(I'm not really defending Sky here, I think the consumer is the loser here, but I very much doubt Ofcom will take any steps to prohibit this sort of thing and under current rules Sky is perfectly entitled to do what it's done).

((Actually Virgin will be the big loser here unless it is very savvy))

― Matt DC, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:46 (seventeen years ago) link

did Sky ever consider their own cable-based service? why did they stick by satellite dish all this time?

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:46 (seventeen years ago) link

NTL had a horrendous reputation for customer service.

From what I can work out the main difference between NTL customer service and VM customer service so far is that it now costs twice as much to phone them and tell them their kit doesn't work.

Is Virgin gaining or losing customers?

Gaining

Losing

― onimo, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:51 (seventeen years ago) link

It looks like this is ultimately going to effect Freeview too judging by the article I saw on the cover of Broadcast the other day; Sky going with their own subscription-only DTT package (requiring new hardware) and so removing Sky Three, Sky News and Sky Sports News from free-to-air.

Michael Jones on Thursday, March 1, 2007 12:12 AM (11 hours ago)

This seems to be the consensus about Sky's strategy; my only question is - echoing blueski's question - why would they divert paying customers from their core satellite service? It can't just be to cater for people whose housing associations won't let them mount dishes.

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:51 (seventeen years ago) link

how NTL survived bankruptcy is a wonder.

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:53 (seventeen years ago) link

(Or maybe I should just read the article.)

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:53 (seventeen years ago) link

Ah, they are gaining BB and TV customers but losing phone customers

It said it had signed 78,100 new broadband subscribers and had 38,500 total TV net additions, up from 22,200 in the previous quarter, but said it had lost 64,300 telephony customers partly due to competitive pressure.

If you scan through a few news articles it's notable that some are going with "Gained 38500" while others are going with "Lost 37000" - when neither are strictly true.

― onimo, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:57 (seventeen years ago) link

I think they'll lose a load of customers over this fight with Sky.

It's prompted me to look around and I've worked out I can double my broadband speed, have a better selection of TV channels and still save ~£25 per month. Thank you beardy Branson for motivating me to get off my arse and dispense with your services.

― onimo, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:59 (seventeen years ago) link

Also Tracer the difference between TV and digital radio is that no one pays money for packages of radio stations. Unless you're talking solely about hardware in which case I think we're talking at cross-purposes.

why would they divert paying customers from their core satellite service?

Presumably either because they're planning to phase out the core satellite service over the long-term, because they can make more money for a subscription-only DTT service, or both.

― Matt DC, Thursday, 1 March 2007 12:11 (seventeen years ago) link

Skipping 24 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

OK what is current cost of Virg/NTL 8 MEG broadband?

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 13:49 (seventeen years ago) link

They don't do 8Mb, it's 2, 4 or 10Mb at the minute.
10Mb is £35 a month.

― treefell, Thursday, 1 March 2007 13:52 (seventeen years ago) link

oh right. i've got 8mb with Homechoice for around £18-20 (can't remember exact price because it's bundled with TV package which is about the same)

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 13:54 (seventeen years ago) link

More details from digital spy about successful renegotiated packages:

Virgin Retentions Deals

― Jack Half-a-Prayer, Thursday, 1 March 2007 13:56 (seventeen years ago) link

ok, someone talk to me about getting a dbox? pros and cons? i'm in ireland, ntl customer

― darraghmac, Thursday, 1 March 2007 14:10 (seventeen years ago) link

haha do those guys know they've all been ripped off? i pay like £25 a month and get sky sports?

― ken c, Thursday, 1 March 2007 14:11 (seventeen years ago) link

ok, someone talk to me about getting a dbox? pros and cons? i'm in ireland, ntl customer

I don't know what a dbox is, but by now I've been a customer of Chorus (utter rubbish unless you really don't care about telly and just want cheap), NTL Digital (not bad but not available where I live) and Sky (OHMYGOD I love my Sky Plus box so very, very much). Sky's absolute biggest drawback, to me, here in Ireland, is that it only offers the digital BBC channels on its Extra Services menu, and you can't record them and they're not included in the programme guide. Annoying.

― accentmonkey, Thursday, 1 March 2007 15:28 (seventeen years ago) link

DTT providers:
* Freeview (Free).
* Top Up TV Anytime (Pay Monthly).
* Setanta Sports (Pay Monthly) (Stand alone service - will be able to show live Premiership games along with Sky).
* A new service from BSkyB (To Be Confirmed).

Presumably you can't have more than one of these.

Why are BBC bothering with this FreeSat thing then?

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 15:54 (seventeen years ago) link

You can have freeview, top up tv and setanta all at the same time if you have a freeview box that accepts cards.
To get the new Sky service you'll need a new set top box that can handle the compression format that Sky plan to use.
Unless OFCOM tell them not to, of course.

― treefell, Thursday, 1 March 2007 16:11 (seventeen years ago) link

i'm fed up with the whole lot of them.

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 16:16 (seventeen years ago) link

the problem with topupTV is that it gets you approx. = jack shit, and there's like 4 boxes in the whole world that accept the card. i have no idea why anyone would need more than freeview, which is... free! that said i care approx. = 0 about european sports, and even less about "quality" US dramas (except for the Wire)

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 1 March 2007 16:27 (seventeen years ago) link

I have free sat, because the quality from the dish on the pub is better than the broken aerial from the roof. Currently, for me, freesat consists of every channel on the sky platform.

― Ed, Thursday, 1 March 2007 16:33 (seventeen years ago) link

also sat box and hookup to the dish were free.

― Ed, Thursday, 1 March 2007 16:40 (seventeen years ago) link

are you saying you've haxx0red the pub's sky tv?

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 16:41 (seventeen years ago) link

i used to rent from a guy who had some kind of weird descrambled german satellite hookup - it could receive signals from like 20 different satellites (with names like... firebird?); i got al-jazeera which i was very excited about until i realized i couldn't understand a word of it. i also got "iraq TV" which was just color bars :( .. also oman tv, loads of others, including BBC World, which is such a vast improvement over News 24 it's not even funny. most of the channels were in german, though, which was pretty unhelpful.

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 1 March 2007 16:56 (seventeen years ago) link

I am completely separate from the pub's sky apart from the feed from their LNB. I came home one sunday and suddenly every channel worked.

― Ed, Thursday, 1 March 2007 17:03 (seventeen years ago) link

I came home one sunday and suddenly every channel worked m'lud.

― CarsmileSteve, Thursday, 1 March 2007 17:13 (seventeen years ago) link

Ha ha, we had that problem with NTL once. The cable service in our apartment had been left on by the previous tenants, and we spent two days on the phone with NTL trying to convince them that it was on, and that we would like to upgrade it to digital. They just kept saying "we can't upgrade you, we have no record of your account".

We lived there for a year without paying a cable bill. Nice.

― accentmonkey, Thursday, 1 March 2007 17:51 (seventeen years ago) link

two months pass...

Virgin Media has confirmed that it will rollout a traffic management system designed to reduce the downstream speed of customers who download lots of data during peak hours.

The cableco defines peak as between 4pm and midnight, and claimed that only the top 5% of downloaders on each speed tier would be affected. Customers on tier M who download over 350MB during peak will have their downstream speed reduced to 1Mbps and their upstream restricted to 128Kbps for four hours. Customers on tier L who download over 750MB during peak will have their downstream reduced to 2Mbps and their upstream restricted to 192Kbps. Customers on Virgin's flagship XL service who download over 3GB during peak will be restricted to 5Mbps down/256Kbps up.

The traffic management system is being implemented at the same time as 20Mbps downstream services are being rolled out to XL tier subscribers.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Saturday, 5 May 2007 21:40 (seventeen years ago) link

Time to shop around I think for a new ISP. Branson can just fuck right off.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Saturday, 5 May 2007 21:43 (seventeen years ago) link

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=75

http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Saturday, 19 May 2007 17:27 (seventeen years ago) link

That will be where 3 channels now carry it, forcing people to pay 3 seperate fees, which of course will end up being more than the £50 season ticket we get just now?

If you have to pay three fees, does that mean you have three boxes for programming, like if I had to have a Dish box, DirecTV and cable?

Or is there one universal box that translates all incoming programs and subscriptions?

― milo z, Saturday, 19 May 2007 17:33 (seventeen years ago) link

If you have Virgin Media you can get it all through that. But you have to pay over Â£120 to Setanta for a years subscription. Then whatever you pay for Sky Sports on top.

Since it was Â£50 for a season ticket for Sky you're now going to have to pay an extra Â£70 to get the same amount of matches.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Saturday, 19 May 2007 17:48 (seventeen years ago) link

Of course I think you get the SPL games with that. So erm yeah that makes it all worthwhile doesn't it?

You're quids in if you're an old firm fan I suppose.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Saturday, 19 May 2007 17:49 (seventeen years ago) link

one year passes...

And tomorrow all sky channels we lost are back again.

― Pfunkboy Formerly Known As... (Herman G. Neuname), Wednesday, 12 November 2008 22:20 (fifteen years ago) link

why do you love sky news?

― conrad, Wednesday, 12 November 2008 22:24 (fifteen years ago) link

Because it's the best news station. And unlike anything else owned by fox it's unbiased politically.

― Pfunkboy Formerly Known As... (Herman G. Neuname), Wednesday, 12 November 2008 22:36 (fifteen years ago) link

and BBC 24 is dull shit

― Pfunkboy Formerly Known As... (Herman G. Neuname), Wednesday, 12 November 2008 22:37 (fifteen years ago) link

haha I forgot to watch the Simpsons. Oh well I will see it tomorrow.

― Pfunkboy Formerly Known As... (Herman G. Neuname), Thursday, 13 November 2008 23:44 (fifteen years ago) link

I already own tonight's episodes on DVD! boo. But last night I saw Treehouse of Horror XIX, which was a directionless mess that didn't remotely resemble any era of The Simpsons I know (and it hasn't been that long since I was occasionally seeing new episodes, only a couple of years).

Sky Arts, which I've never seen before, looks like it could satisfy some of my BBC 4ish middle brow hankerings. But overall I don't think these new channels at my disposal does too much for me trying to find something to watch at 4am.

― Merdeyeux, Friday, 14 November 2008 20:17 (fifteen years ago) link

Yeah, I have seen all of the ones shown tonight. Bloody typical!!

― Pfunkboy Formerly Known As... (Herman G. Neuname), Friday, 14 November 2008 20:22 (fifteen years ago) link

As for 4am watching, you cant even watch UK Gold then now. The couldve put old dr whos or something on then. Booo.

― Pfunkboy Formerly Known As... (Herman G. Neuname), Friday, 14 November 2008 20:23 (fifteen years ago) link

six months pass...

I don't know if this is of any use to anyone, but Virgin Media currently have a deal where if you sign up and pick their "XL" TV package you can get a V+ (like Sky+ only for Virgin) for only £50 rather than the usual £100; and when I spoke to them today they eventually admitted that if I wanted to I could cancel the XL package and go back down to "L" without any recourse, thus instantly saving me £50 and not being saddled with paying more for a bunch of shitty channels I don't care about. Dude seemed genuinely amazed that nobody had mentioned it before...

― Background Zombie (CharlieNo4), Wednesday, 20 May 2009 17:01 (fourteen years ago) link

one year passes...

so it goes...

BSkyB buys Virgin Media TV channels in £160m deal
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/10238515.stm

― mdskltr (blueski), Friday, 4 June 2010 16:48 (thirteen years ago) link

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