How did I know soemone would come in here preaching about how great SKY is? As far as I'm concerned NTL are offering a good service. We might not have all the channels or all the interactive services, but we get the channels we want. The only channels we don't get are some of the +1s and most of the minority intrest channels no-one watches anyway. We don't need to pay any more, or get any more. We're happy with what we get. SKY is not really offering that much of a better service, just a few extra channels most people are highly unlikely to watch, and extra interactive most people will rarely use.
james2001 on 9:31 pm on Jan. 13, 2002
As far as I'm concerned NTL are offering a good service.
Apart from analogue, which is crap. If they can't run that properly, why should I trust them to run their digital service any better? Running such a poor service, even one destined to be replaced, does not reflect well on the company. Is it really so hard for them to write a program to show slides that didn't crash every five minutes? Pure technical incompetence.
CA
CrystalAvenger
Quote:
james2001 on 9:31 pm on Jan. 13, 2002
How did I know soemone would come in here preaching about how great SKY is? As far as I'm concerned NTL are offering a good service. We might not have all the channels or all the interactive services, but we get the channels we want. The only channels we don't get are some of the +1s and most of the minority intrest channels no-one watches anyway. We don't need to pay any more, or get any more. We're happy with what we get. SKY is not really offering that much of a better service, just a few extra channels most people are highly unlikely to watch, and extra interactive most people will rarely use.
(Edited by james2001 at 9:35 pm on Jan. 13, 2002)
Very well said!
All this stuff about 'Interactive' and 'Press RED' - I really couldn't care less about it - I got ITV Digital because it offered me some great extra channels (UK Gold, BBC Choice and News 24, PlayUK, MTV, Sky One etc.) in far superior quality to what I would get at a price I can afford. It might not have all the interactive features that Sky has - but at the end of the day, I got to to watch TV programmes, not play around with various voting options etc - I have a PC and the Internet for that http://web.ukonline.co.uk/tv.home/forum/emoticons/biggrin.gif
EDIT: Also when I move out of my parents house - which I don't think will be that many years away - I just pack up the box and take it to my new home, I don't have any bloody wiring, dish etc. to worry about!
(Edited by CrystalAvenger at 1:32 pm on Jan. 14, 2002)
True! We got cable because it offered what we wanted- a reasonable selection of channels at a decent price. Not 100s of channels we'll never watch and interactive we'll never use. People have a choice, and if they want ITV Digital that's fine. Not everybody wants SKY.
>use the EPG to set videos and I rarely use interactive. Digital TV >should be about TV not about the fancy stuff that's offered.
Digital TV has to be about the 'fancy stuff thats offered' otherwise it would never succeed. All the current Digital TV platforms are overcompressed to hell and back. Some (such as Sky) aren't too bad generally, but I decent uncompressed analogue signal is still unbeatable, and people won't change from it unless there is something else.
The change from Sky Analogue to SkyDigital showed this. At launch, SkyDigital had no digital text, no interactive services, just many more nice channels and +1's which got very limited use. Result? Sky Analogue remained the main platform. I can tell you now, if it was still that way now, we wouldn't ever have changed.
Only when they started curtailing the service offered to Analogue customers, refused to launch any new channels on it, and bolting loads and loads of interactive features onto SkyDigital did people start to change in droves.
Only ITV Digital entered a new market (and it's unfortunate that the first terrestrial pay TV service was so universally screwed up), Digital Satellite and Digital Cable simply couldn't ever compete with their analogue counterparts on the strength of the extra channels.
I think ITV digital made a bad move trying to compete with SKY. They have little bandwidth, and they're channels are so over-compressed that picture quality is poor, and the picture keeps breakign up. If ITV digital became FTA/ a minority pay channel service with about 4 or 5 channels on each MUX rather an about the 8 or 9 per mux that they are currentally doing, then picture would be a lot better and there would be less braking up. If yhey fold, it's theyre own fault for trying to compete with satellite and cable. Satellite has quite a lot of bandwidth as they have 4 sats exclusive to them (astra 2A-2D), and share a 5th (Eurobird) and cable has much more than sat, but at the moment aren't making much use of it.
Yes, ITV Digital's big failing is trying to compete with SkyDigital as though they're on level ground. They aren't, they're vastly inferior. Like I have said many times, they do fill a niche market very well (i.e. people who don't want or can't get cable or satellite). But these people are in a minority.
I don't want them to fold because atm I need them (I'm a student in a hall who can't have a satellite dish) but if they marketed themselves to the people who need them, they may be doing better. Since I've been at uni about 4 or 5 people I know have subscribed to ITV Digital because I had it - they wouldn't have otherwise. If ITV Digital put a page in every fresher's guide along 'You Want Sky One and MTV in your room?' sort of lines they would doubtless get many more customers.
But as it is, trying to target people to prevent them from getting Sky or Cable is a big big mistake. They aren't equals with Sky, they can't compete with Sky's target audience. They have a small niche audience and that's all pay DTT will ever have, if they realised that and targeted the audience they can reach they'd be doing a lot better.
