New Sky channels: Crime, Comedy, Documentaries, Nature

A number of lifestyle channels have closed (or rebranded) during recent years, including Diva TV, Style Network, (the original) Sky Real Lives and more recently Sky Living and Real Lives.

Also, Lifetime has been demoted to 187 on the Sky EPG, and the HD channel closed quite recently, so wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't last much longer, and certainly can't see it becoming Sky Lifetime or being made available on Now TV.

Sky Nature has, as mentioned in this thread previously, content from Love Nature, it stands out like a sore thumb. Visually stunning but with wholly unsuitable background music tracks and commentary which at times is barely monotone in delivery.

Grim in my opinion.

Spotted tonight that Sky History +1 still has the old +1 graphic in the corner of the screen, therefore sitting on top of the Sky History DOG rather than beside it in its brief appearances.

Someone on Digital Spy saying a new Pick channel has appeared in the SI data for Freesat.

https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/2381708/pick-hd-on-the-way

Possible HD version for the FTA football?

I imagine it's only a temporary channel for the football, though seems a lot of effort for 8 football matches. Some outlets are also referring to the channel as Sky Pick... The Independent are even calling it 'Sky Sports Pick'.

I doubt Sky are going to give Pick away for free in HD permanently, despite the programme content not exactly being premium and a fair amount of it still in 4:3. Unless this is a new directive from Sky's new overlords - get rid of the +1's and have all channels in HD...? Maybe Challenge HD next?

I hope Pick HD ends up on Now TV as well temporarily?

To be fair though, them closing Challenge +1 does sort of seem plausible that Pick HD will be likely to stay.

They're showing 25 on Pick.

Are they? Fair enough. On the list I seen they only listed 8 matches as being on Pick.

Not all of the remaining fixtures for this season have been announced, so there will be more than those you've seen on lists to come...

The transponder hasn't got enough capacity for another HD channel unless bitrates for other channels are cut or a service is removed.



But if other services don't get cut back, given that all new Freesat boxes since 2012 support DVB-S2, it isn't a major problem if Pick SD went there as a temporary solution to allow the channel to use the UK spotbeam for the live football. In such a scenario, the current version of Pick could be encrypted and become free-to-view for users of Sky boxes with an active Sky or FSFS card.

Back in 2013, when Pick last showed live football (as part of a Sky spoiler when BT Sport launched), Pick on satellite carred a sport free schedule, while the action continued on the Freeview version.

Considering Pick and Challenge are shown on some Swiss cable/IPTV networks, I wouldn't be surprised if they do a similar thing where viewers watching FTA on satellite have alternative programming on Pick unless Sky come up with an alternative solution for UK Freesat users.