Sky Anytime

[Dr Lobster*]

those of you with a sky+ box will have noted that your sky box has a selection of programmes automatically downloaded ready for viewing.

i've you've ever been up in the middle of the night you'd have notice how the disk in the sky+ box is grinding away... i'm just wondering though - are the programmes streamed in real time (that is, a 30 minute programme takes 30 minutes to download) and they are broadcast on a carousel and the sky box picks up anything your subscription allows or they are streamed faster, possibly multiple programmes at a time ?

[marksi]

I'm not sure, but you get the same selection of programmes even if your subscription doesn't allow you to watch them. Personally I'd much prefer the other half of the drive to record what *I* want to watch and not what Sky wants me to watch.

[Nick Harvey]

I'm not into Sky Plus, so know nothing about it.

Can you switch off this "option"?

I'd have thought, in these new green times of "switch it off, don't leave it in standby", that some people would be starting to complain about how much of their expensive electricity this uses.

[marksi]

I'm not into Sky Plus, so know nothing about it.

Can you switch off this "option"?

I'd have thought, in these new green times of "switch it off, don't leave it in standby", that some people would be starting to complain about how much of their expensive electricity this uses.

You can switch it off, but selfishly that doesn't mean you get the 80GB of space back for yourself.

[Inspector Sands]

A catch up seevice along the lines of the iPlayer, however, would be superb. Please?

It's difficult to do VOD on satellite as they can't have a different video channel for every subscriber. The only way Sky could do it is via broadband... which is probably why they bought an ISP many years ago and have expanded their offering to 'triple play'. I don't think it'll be long until they'll have a Homechoice/BT Vision type service

It's probably the one area where cable TV has the upper hand over satellite - VOD has been standard on Virgin (and Telewest/NTL) for about 3 years now and there's a lot more on there than Anytime or Sky Box office can offer. BBC programmes from the last week have been available on cable long before iPlayer appeared

[iSon]

A catch up seevice along the lines of the iPlayer, however, would be superb. Please?

It's difficult to do VOD on satellite as they can't have a different video channel for every subscriber. The only way Sky could do it is via broadband... which is probably why they bought an ISP many years ago and have expanded their offering to 'triple play'. I don't think it'll be long until they'll have a Homechoice/BT Vision type service

It's probably the one area where cable TV has the upper hand over satellite - VOD has been standard on Virgin (and Telewest/NTL) for about 3 years now and there's a lot more on there than Anytime or Sky Box office can offer. BBC programmes from the last week have been available on cable long before iPlayer appeared

And I must say I'm very pleased that some of the bigger BBC programmes (like Merlin, Spooks, etc) are archived for longer than the standard 7 days on Virgin Media which means it's incredibly easy to catch up with the show if you've gone away on holiday for longer than a week. The on demand service that Virgin provides really is great and is well worth having the phone and broadband for - I don't pay for the TV because I don't flick through channels anymore - I know what I want to watch and I watch it. And thanks to on demand it means I can do it whenever.

[marksi]

Freesat boxes will have BBC iPlayer capability added to them. No set date yet though but I'd see that as the next major development in that area.

[Sput]

oooooh, is that the same as above or do they have networking capability?

[Dr Lobster*]

it does surprise me that even the new sky boxes don't seem to have an ethernet port (or even wireless support) on them so they need to dial out with a crappy slow modem for internet access. nearly everybody has broadband now and those modems and extensions put in by a sky installer are often a contributing factor in dsl speed issues.

btw, do you still need to connect your box to the phone line for a year with a new subscription ?

[marksi]

oooooh, is that the same as above or do they have networking capability?

There is an ethernet port on every Freesat box, it is part of the platform spec.

I'd expect a BBC iPlayer service on Freesat boxes in the first half of next year though I would think the timetable will depend on the manufacturer of the boxes (ie they won't all necessarily have it at the same time).

[Spencer For Hire]

it does surprise me that even the new sky boxes don't seem to have an ethernet port (or even wireless support) on them so they need to dial out with a crappy slow modem for internet access.

The exception is Sky+ HD boxes which do have one. I wonder if Sky are planning an IPTV VOD service available only to HD subscribers. It would of course be an extra incentive for people to upgrade and further keep Sky's cash registers ker-chinging.

There may also be a technical issue that the HD boxes could be the only ones with the processing power to cope with an additional VOD service - in the same way that the new EPG is only going to be rolled out to HD boxes because of concerns that the SD boxes couldn't cope with it.

Or the ethernet port could just be there to make the box look fancy and agitate people on DigitalSpy, rather like the unused Sky+ USB socket.