Here's a thought... On Sky, and on cable too (right?) there's no channels at each hundred's -00 (100, 200, 300 etc). Why not do some interactive service which shows realtime mosaics, just like like CanalSatellite and Astra do in Europe? That'd be smashing. I've emailed Sky about that in the past and like hell did they take any notice :D but I think that'd be a genuinely useful feature, far simple than flicking through an EPG - just skimread the screen to see if you recognise anything on, or if you see something you might find interesting? arrow button across to it and there we go. The buttons are already there on the Sky remotes (and most if not all Freeview remotes, too). Another annoyance for me with Sky is that when you're on the Now & Next banner, you can go up and down to view different channels, but you can only see what's on next when you're actually *on* the channel. CanalSatellite, right from the outset, let you see now and next epg info for the channel you're on AND any channel you flick to on the Now & Next banner (so you didn't have to change channel to see what would be shown next on another, if you catch my drift). I emailed Sky about that too, no response. Anyway, back to my original thought - does anybody think that Sky will EVER offer the + functionality for free or a one-off payment? It'd kill me to finally get Sky in my own place and not have Sky+, especially as I had to put up with my Dad's resistance against getting Sky+ in our house when I was younger (he still doesn't have it, says installation and box makes it too expensive). Grr.
_____ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Brian Butterworth Sent: 19 October 2007 13:18 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Thoughts from a previous BBC employee On 19/10/2007, Steve Jolly <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Andrew Bowden wrote: > There's no technical reason - it's just the business model. Sky+ has > been used to try and keep you subscribing - to reduce their churn. The > idea that your PVR is about to stop working when you stop subscribing no > doubt panics people. > > And of course TiVo did the same - £10 a month for listings as well, > although in that case they did actually have to provide the listings. > With a Sky+ they are already there. It'll be interesting to see what happens when the entirely subscription-free Freesat service (the BBC/ITV initiative*, not Freesat-from-Sky) launches. * http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/news/press_releases/27_04_2007.html Indeed it will. Will Ofcom have to control the channel numbers - they took away telephone number allocation away from BT. It would make so much sense for the same numbers to be used for the same channels on different platforms. It's like a weird mental sudoku to remember channel numbers and TV captions and listing magazines are confusing! Also, it would remove a pointless secondary market in the numbers. S - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ -- Please email me back if you need any more help. Brian Butterworth www.ukfree.tv <http://www.ukfree.tv>
