Sky Catch-Up TV for ITV, C4, C5, etc

When watching iPlayer, ITV Hub, etc, I generally do so by using the Catch Up section on my Sky HD box.

On those occasions where that's not possible, I'll watch via the PS3 (oldskool) or some form of app.

On all non-Sky platforms I have used a commercial broadcaster's catch-up service, ads are delivered during commercial breaks. However, when watching on Sky, other than sponsor adverts, there are no ads at all.

I realise this is probably because of technical reasons more than anything else - if not, could someone enlighten me?

Does anyone know if Sky has made commercial arrangments with these broadcasters to recompense them for not showing adverts on their catch-up service via a Sky box?

TIA

There's no technical reason which prevents them from including adverts on Sky's catch up service. ITV and C4 both had ads in the past but may have an arrangement with Sky to make some (or all) programmes available ad-free.

C5 catch-up still carries adverts, powered by Sky's Adsmart system.

Sky catch-up works very differently to the broadcaster operated platforms like iPlayer, ITV Hub, All4 etc.

Broadcasters supply Sky with a master encode of their content, and then Sky handle the distribution via their own CDN (not the broadcaster). As a result there are some differences. Channel 4 have a lot of All4-only content that hasn't been broadcast. That isn't available on the Sky 'All4' branded service. I think Sky have a deal that it is purely a catch-up service for C4.

The quality of Sky's catch-up service is very high though - it includes 1080i content - and has 5.1 Dolby options

Would they be able to disable fast-forwarding though? Even when I had ads on On Demand content I was able to skip through them. It was possibly the best thing about Sky, although not enough of a reason to justify the cost.

Technically they may be able to - but they haven't implemented it.

One big difference between Sky catchup and other systems is that, for Sky+HD viewers at least (I think it’s different for Sky Q) you don’t stream the content, you download it and watch the recording as if it were a PVR recording.

That has one big implication- you can fast forward through any adverts. In fact Sky includes adverts at the start of some of its catch up/box sets contents sometimes (though usually no more than a promo, ident, and sponsor bumper).

For this reason, if I can, I always favour the Sky catch up (or indeed, to live stream via Sky Go) over certain broadcasters own players.

The Sky HD catch-up service also offers the highest picture quality of all the HD catch-up platforms for the main broadcasters (though it uses progressive download rather than streaming).

AIUI the BBC iPlayer stuff on Sky is ~8Mbs 1080i compared to ~5Mbs 720p on their streamed platforms (using MPEG-DASH, HLS, HDS etc.)

That's been the case ever since Sky on-Demand launched which gives it the advantage as you say over streaming because you just download it once to the box and watch it as many times as you want regardless of whether the internet's working on it. Works in the same way for Sky Q I believe.

This approach is what makes it suitable for any speed of internet connection because its only used to get the programme. So somebody unfortunate enough to be stuck on a 1Mb connection can still use Sky on Demand, it'll just take longer to download enough to get to the point where one can play it all the way through without stopping.



Last time I checked this I believe they were looking at using the Adsmart technology rather than just embedding a bunch of adverts that would become outdated after a few weeks. However Adsmart only works if you play the ads at normal speed not fast-forward.

With regards to the "stop you skipping adverts" - it must be possible, after all you can't use the Sky+ Pause or rewind when the BBC One HD "turn to channel 101" slide appears BUT you can reel back through it and pause it after the event, just not at the time. So on this basis I presume since its possible to temporarily override Sky+ for the purposes of that slide it should be possible to do the same on the commercial channels on catch-up. In theory.

This seems rather pointless, you might want to rewind back to the end of whatever was on before the slide. What is the reason for it?

No idea. But the same thing happens on the CBBC closedown loop too.