> Are you implying that Sky don't actually control a lot of the > content which is broadcast and received via their closed-loop > system? If so, that would seem a bit amateurish on their > behalf. Surely they have the power to vet and withdraw > channels in realtime?
For technical reasons they do - to appear in the Sky EPG you must agree to certain technical standards IIRC, and to supply correct EPG data. You also have to pay your money! However Sky's EPG open to all and Sky is not allowed to pick and choose who appears in it. They can, of course, block all new entrants for technical reasons - as they have done recently. > Surely as the platform provider Sky have a responsibility to > monitor all the content broadcast through their systems (even > if they don't own the satellites and just lease bandwidth)? > It would've seemed a bit pointless to not have the facilities > to monitor all the channels being broadcast. Some broadcasters pay Sky to playout their channels and they'll monitor those I'm sure. Many broadcasters go through 3rd parties or do it themselves. Who knows what the exact proportions are, but given how many channels there are, there's a lot of channels to monitor and Sky won't want to be doing regular monitoring of most of the channels, I'm sure. Ultimately playout monitoring has to be the resposibility of the broadcaster in question - which is why four floors below my desk, there's a batch of people working for Red Bee Media whose job it is to check what they pump out (which includes BBC, BBC Worldwide, UKTV and Virgin Media Television) > And on the subject of good money, I'd see a mosaic as > definite value-added (possibly persuading me to stay with > them a little longer) and they could tout it as a brand new > feature "making Sky easier for everyone" or somesuch > similar... And anyway, what's a PC for the rendering and a > few megabits per second of upstream bandwidth between friends? You'd need a lot of mosaics to cover the sheer number of channels available through Sky's EPG. Cos if you didn't cover them all, someone would no doubt complain of bias to Ofcom! - 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/
