Sky Sports Revamp

Yeah, not quite sure why everyone is taking them as gospel. They’re not posted by a verified source and they don’t look quite right to me.

I suspect that's what Sky Sports Mix could be for, for some stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else. Assuming Mix will still be around, that is.

Pricing wise, if Sky are indeed going to offer sports on its own for £18 a month (and we say that's just for sports regardless of having a bundle), could this also mean the concept of premium channels (sport and movies) is soon to go out the window and you won't have to have the basic package as a prerequisite for either movies or sport?

I mean with Now TV you can have just a Cinema pass at whatever price a month for example. I wonder based on the success of NowTV Sky are looking at adopting certain elements of it on their TV package?

The logos come directly from Sky. I am confident in my source. I will wholeheartedly apologise if something different appears on screen.

I think they just look a bit too plain for what we expect from Sky, but I'm certainly not saying they're definitely fake (or definitely real).

So, er, what happens when they want to show more than one football match at a time? Is there going to be a lot more hidden behind the red button?

There's supposed to be two football channels.

The problem will be when they need to show two rugby matches, or GAA and rugby league, or any two of the non "chosen" sports at the same time.

This is what is leading me to conclude that Sky's rights strategy will now be completely focused on the "chosen" and that the "non chosen" - in particular rugby union - can now look forward to less coverage.

(One source is claiming the European Rugby cups are on their way to BT. There are murmurings Sky would give up the Pro 12 once this contract ends. That still leaves Sky with quite a bit of rights, particularly exclusive SANZAAR rights and England and Ireland's Autumn Internationals, as well as the Top 14).

But announcing your strategy in this way is a hell of a way of letting your rival know what sports they can now spend less bidding on and hope to retain....

I'm assuming they won't call them "Sky Sports Arena HD" on the EPG, mainly because it won't fit, but they might copy the Sky Movies approach and call them "Sky Arena", "Sky Football 1" etc. but even at that, Sky Football HD 1 won't fit on the EPG, so it's going to have to be abbreviated anyway and will look a mess. I wonder if they will ever introduce actual channel logos on the EPG instead of text names, like they do for their online TV Guide

Sky Q has logos, doesn't it? So does the (awful) Horizon EPG that Virgin Media uses in Ireland.

Virgin’s TiVo and V6 boxes in the UK use channel logos, and YouView does as well, provided that you have your box connected to the internet.

Either way, although the truncated channel names make it seem like it’s an awful mess, that is entirely negated by using channel logos. That way, it feels slightly more accessible and also goes some way of reducing clutter in the EPG.

At least the "name trunctation" thing is not as bad as the EPG in the States, when things like "Cartoon Network and Disney Channel" are reduced to "Toon, Dis"

Which to be honest is what we had in the analogue cable days.