Tekforums
Chat => Entertainment & Technology => Topic started by: neXus on September 19, 2017, 03:33:54 AM
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Anyone think this is getting out of control?
I do not mind paying fair price for my streaming service. I love Netflix but Every media company and their grandma want to do their own streaming service.
We all likely have a handful of shows but its an ever increasing world that you have to pay 10+ different companies across multiple apps to watch shows you want. OR you go illegal.
And then the free service or the TV channel apps. Here in Australia you got 7, Channel 10, SBS.. UK will be like the BBC, ITV etc.
Our media units and TV's will and are getting just rammed full of these streaming services apps.
Now Disney are doing their own as well, It is just getting out of hand. Even on a billing stand point, having to pay $10 here, $10 there, $14.99 there.
Am I wrong, Surely they can work out a better way?
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consumer choice.
you pay for what you want to watch.
+ having catchup is really useful.
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I find it easiest to subscribe to one service and pay about £8 a month to fill my boots :ptu:
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In a way it's history repeating itself, with the TV channels not having learned that the goldenage of TV was when there were only a few stations so more resource to produce quality material and a larger market share as viewers had to choose between 5 stations.
People went off sky and the likes and went to streaming as TV had got silly with 100+ channels of crap with the odd gem here and there, whilst the few streamers kind of started off with the cherry picked gems easily accessible. Now, as you say, there's a bunch of streaming services, and for the most part they're putting out crap rather than quality.
We easily spend as much time going through netflix trying to find something to watch as we would have channel hopping on a normal TV!
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Generally I think it works fine as long as you don't get tied into long contracts.
For example, I have Netflix, I love Netflix, I subscribe every month.
When The Grand Tour came out I subscribed to Amazon Prime and then cancelled once TGT was finished.
When Game of Thrones season 7 came out I subscribed to Now.tv and then cancelled once GOT was finished.
I'm perfectly happy to do that.
Had either Amazon prime or Now.tv been 1 year minimum contracts or similar I would have just gone the pirate route. :ptu:
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I have amazon prime, but dont watch the streaming stuff.
I watch very little TV TBH.
Easy to get cheap amazon prime student account.
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We get our money's worth out of Prime (excluding the TV content) so that's just a bonus, aside from that we pay for Netflix. The 4k content (e.g. new Star Trek) is glorious. Terrestrial needs to catch dafuq up.
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Terrestrial needs to catch dafuq up.
it wont because of bandwidth
Its about time they announced the pulling of SD channels. That will free up some bandwidth. Though would probably still be barely enough for 1 channel.
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Maybe, but even Sky and Virgin could do a lot better. 4k content on Sky is an £80+ a month subscription, I mean wtf is that :wave: :-\
I would happily pay Sky £10/20 a month for only 4k content, nothing else.
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Maybe, but even Sky and Virgin could do a lot better. 4k content on Sky is an £80+ a month subscription, I mean wtf is that :wave: :-\
I would happily pay Sky £10/20 a month for only 4k content, nothing else.
But its bandwidth - that £10-20 would not cover the expense of it.
A 4k channel through satellite would be the equivalent of 4 HD channels in bandwidth.
So do they charge £10-£20 on top of the £10 they charge for HD?
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You can only get it through their most premium Sky Q package and then you have to pay extra for the additional 4k content on top, it's just ludicrous - but they know elitists will pay. £10-20 for say 4/5 4k channels wouldn't cover it? E.g. Sky One, HBO, whatever else is 'premium' on Sky these days.
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You can only get it through their most premium Sky Q package and then you have to pay extra for the additional 4k content on top, it's just ludicrous - but they know elitists will pay. £10-20 for say 4/5 4k channels wouldn't cover it? E.g. Sky One, HBO, whatever else is 'premium' on Sky these days.
but I doubt if they would get enough subs. I had 4k as a F&F deal & full package for £48 a year.
To put 4 or 5 channels in 4k would be the equivalent bandwidth (if not more) of all the Sky HD Channels put together (Sky as in movies, sports, etc. - not inc. BBC, ITV, etc.).
Bandwidth costs money - which is why they will not do it until they think they would get enough subscribers.
It took Sky 3 years or so to launch HD channels after the launch of HD TVs, but that came around at the same time Flat Screens dropped in price.
Still think we are a year or 2 away from Sky going 4k route via satellite imo... and maybe why Sky Q is called Sky Q silver atm?
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This is one case where Egg is right, they can put out 4 1080P channels for one 4K channel, and most people still regard 1080P as at least adequate. This same applies to computers with most still using a 1080P screen rather than a larger one.
Sky is marketing 4K as a niche product to try to get as much money out of it as they can. Their target is profit, not benefit to individual customers.
The rapid advance of technology has been as much a problem as a benefit. Someone won't gain much by upgrading their 24" TV to 4K if they don't have the room for a larger screen.
8K technology is already out there, so how long before they start to try pushing that?
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Resolution only matters above a certain screen size asyou point out - I doubt they would ever make 4k 24" TVs (bearing in mind viewing distances) - so 8k would be pointless for most anyway, its already at the point where there is little additional sharpness/clarity to be had. But the niceties that come with 4k like HDR, Atmos etc make it a decent step up. You can have HDR without 4k but I can't see providers offering that on the regular channels somehow. If you have an OLED screen HDR and 4k make an amazing picture.
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Resolution only matters above a certain screen size asyou point out - I doubt they would ever make 4k 24" TVs (bearing in mind viewing distances) - so 8k would be pointless for most anyway, its already at the point where there is little additional sharpness/clarity to be had. But the niceties that come with 4k like HDR, Atmos etc make it a decent step up. You can have HDR without 4k but I can't see providers offering that on the regular channels somehow. If you have an OLED screen HDR and 4k make an amazing picture.
yup, but its all on the uptake. Lots of people will have a 4k tv that does not have HDR. So its a very small market.
Sky should pull the non HD channels & make HD free. That should free up enough bandwidth for 1 or maybe 2 4k channels.
I am surprised they dont put content on the 4k test channel. Its also worth poking around to see if there are any other test channels you can manually add. I know Beeb was testing on certain terrestail transponders.
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The Sky satellites are old tech, they were not made to carry 4K content, and can't easily be modified That might be easily solvable but then people don't always have the most modern boxes either. If people don't have the equipment to use the 4K signal they aren't going to pay for it. I wonder, despite the availability of high quality radios available how many people still listen to tinny awful ones? Same with DVD vs Blue Ray. It's a situation of is it good enough?
Sky get most of their money for the number of channels transmitted, not the quality of picture, so they aren't going to bother as long as they make a nice profit.
I'm surprised none of the rental companies tried offering a digital content on memory stick option. You would go in, get a stick, they put date limited content on for you. Next time you go back it's deleted and replaced with new content. Might have been interesting.
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The Sky satellites are old tech, they were not made to carry 4K content, and can't easily be modified That might be easily solvable but then people don't always have the most modern boxes either. If people don't have the equipment to use the 4K signal they aren't going to pay for it. I wonder, despite the availability of high quality radios available how many people still listen to tinny awful ones? Same with DVD vs Blue Ray. It's a situation of is it good enough?
Sky get most of their money for the number of channels transmitted, not the quality of picture, so they aren't going to bother as long as they make a nice profit.
I'm surprised none of the rental companies tried offering a digital content on memory stick option. You would go in, get a stick, they put date limited content on for you. Next time you go back it's deleted and replaced with new content. Might have been interesting.
Not sure what your off about with the satellites.
They will carry 4k easily enough, as its all digital - bandwidth is the bottleneck & the price it costs them to pay Astra. I used to have a motorised dish & the picture quality across Europe was far superior to what we get in the UK - especially the German satellite - though now Germany is Sky as well, it has probably been compressed highly to save bandwidth/force more channels down the same bandwidth.
What you are saying about memory stick was an idea about DVDs years ago. The technology was called DIVX - Stores could burn a blank disk that would have an expiry date.
As you point out though, the biggest issue is the uptake of subscribers upgrading the receiver box.
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Sky are well aware they have to issue new hardware all the time, same as ISPs, that's nothing new. You pay a premium for their latest Q box which supports 4k just fine, if you need a new dish, LNB, whatever no one is going to balk at the installation cost (which they'll waiver half the time anyway).
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Sky are well aware they have to issue new hardware all the time, same as ISPs, that's nothing new. You pay a premium for their latest Q box which supports 4k just fine, if you need a new dish, LNB, whatever no one is going to balk at the installation cost (which they'll waiver half the time anyway).
Q does not a new LNB & a lot of the time a new dish, as the LNB does not fit older dishes. I cant see it happening for a while. You can get 4k films on Sky through on demand. So I think that is their solution. Problem is this weeks premier will not be available in 4k until next week.
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There are some hardware coming out that are like media units and trying to do things with screen/ app interface scraping to work. Very clever tech but very expensive.
It would be nice at least that they offered a secure, fast API solution to allow 3rd parties to hook up single sign in access interfaces...
At the very least they should be going to Apple, Xbox, PS4 and allowing such and have a standard so they can allow logged in accounts to access all their media. There is some of this but way and far from what it needs to be.