[thechat] Sky Picnic

[William Anderson]

Martin Burns wrote:
> [snip]
> 
> *shrug* I think pay channels on DTT is A Bad Idea all round, but the  
> horse is long bolted on that one. Take it up with OfCom I would, mate.

Ofcom isn't CamelCased :)  Also it's up to Ofcom whether it goes ahead 
or not; I hope not.

> Plus, I'd wait for the full details to be announced before I'd slate  
> it out of hand...

What's to know other than timeshared MPEG2 channels replacing Sky News, 
Sky Sports News and Sky Three on Freeview, removing ~ 10m ad seats from 
BSkyB's revenue, channels encrypted using different technology from Top 
Up TV, thus nullifying the smartcard capability of every ONdigital / ITV 
Digital and TUTV/Setanta box in the country in terms of receiving 
Picnic.  The timeshare looks shit - it's mainly why TUTV wasn't as 
successful as it could have been - the channels look shit, and the 
requirement for new set top boxes to receive MPEG4 stuff later on is 
fucking lunacy.

There's a working, stable, deployed DVB-T standard which Freeview in 
their sanity decided to keep when ITV Digital went under.  There are now 
millions of boxes, a lot of them now with recording capability, and TVs 
using DVB-T to receive Freeview.  How many people realistically are 
going to throw that out to buy a Picnic box to get them some timeshared 
channels?  *And* they *still* lose Sky News, Sky Sports News and Sky 
Three - Picnic doesn't magically restore them for Picnic subscribers.

Clusterfuck.  I'd sack whoever approved the idea.  Golden clusterfuck. 
But somehow typical of Sky's hit-miss-hit-miss deployment strategy, and 
their intention to fragment the digital television market in their 
favour, as if owning DSAT in the UK wasn't big enough for them.

-n