Pay TV through the internet

The DMac and D2Mac system has always been far superior. Anyone who had BSB and Sky Analogue at the time (yes, I was one of them!) will be able to tell you that the BSB picture was absolutely excellent. I believe it was actually one of the first mainstream digital (or was it when D2Mac was introduced - which I know was digital?) TV systems, but never caught on completely due to the fact that high bandwidth meant that expansion in terms of MPEG just wasn't possible. Shame really.

Still, Sky would look a lot better if they chose quality over quantity. But that could be said for all digital services these days!

Incidentally, I think that TV over the internet will probably go the way of being able to access your favourite programmes. Storing them may be a problem, but haven't the BBC said they plan to put a large part of their archive on a dedicated site in broadband quality?

Still in the short term, I'd definately pay for a TV service over broadband. The quality is perfectly watchable in my opinion.

I understand that the lineup will include

- Music/Style channel (poss a brand tie in with a mag)
- Football channel (Internet righs are sold seperatly to TV)
- Game/Technology
- Fashion/Lifestyle

Given internet econonics, I'd guess an 'adult' service will be in their somewhere!

These will be streamed programme service and not on demand 'channels' - details are pretty scarce

Another operator is loking at a 'home choice' style package that will add broadband connection and set-top adapter to the package - the broadband is uncontended (1-1) 1mb stream

As wholesale pricing is lower now than when home choice was launched, maybee this will viable...

This type of service is something which I have been looking a lot into at the moment. i.e. I was watching NBC online from a friend in the US to test this out. It was streamed at 128k yet used a brilliant codec which gave brilliant quality - if you increased the bandwidth the quality got even better. With lots of channels broadcasting like this, it is watchable (all text can be read) and not that bad.

Bandwidth isn't too much of a problem from the providers stance, although at the moment in the US bandwidth is dirt cheap - say firms get a dedicated server from places like ev1servers, you are looking at $1000 a month if used in a non-ISP state from bandwidth providers like Cognet or if you want the ISP based model (which I think streaming would use) is $3000/mo for 100Mbps connection. Supported with subs and advertising, it might break even until bandwidth prices drop further.

I don't see that would work as well, because it's a fundamentally different kettle of fish to other UK digital platforms. Why would anyone pay for streamed porn programmes when rafts and rafts of such material is available free?

Ditto that for a lot of the other stuff that they've mentioned - specifically making it only a programme service and not a service of streamed channels.

What is needed is for recognised UK pay TV channels such as Sky One, UK Gold, MTV, E4, Discovery Channel etc with some FTA channels like Sky News, Extreme Sports, Bloomberg, CNN International and dare I say some shopping channels to bolster it. No premium channels because that would push the cost up too high (and if internet football rights are sold separately, it would make any appearance of Sky Sports very restricted). This is the sort of thing I was proposing (and must be possible to licence some how) and this is all i'm prepared to subscribe to.

I'm not going to pay someone to stream programmes provided through unrecognised programme services - I can already do that for free as can any internet savvy user (which I'd venture to guess most people interested in such a service would be).

One issue I have thought about though is what would happen with TV licencing? A TV Licence is defined as being a document you must hold if you own and/or have in your possession and operate TV receiving equipment. If this service is delivered through the internet and operates purely on a software level, you would not as it stands need a licence to use this service, yet you would still have access to a full TV service. I'd probably see this as being the single thing that would block it from happening. Alternatively, it could be embraced as a trial for making BBC services subscription and scrapping the licence fee in the future; the BBC channels could be carried on the platform but only available as an add on extra subscription. They could then conduct a survey to find out who intends to use this service as their primary means of watching TV, and monitor how many people have paid extra to have the BBC, and see how closely the two line up. If they are close, then that's a pretty good indication (albeit not conclusive evidence I admit) that making the BBC subscription only, thus (theoretically at least) taking away the unfairness of the licence fee without forcing the BBC to go commercial could work in the future.