Sky Phasing out All SD boxes starting today

[piptaps]

Sky to phase out SD receivers

By Julian Clover
January 28, 2010 10.15 UK

Sky is to cease deploying standard definition satellite receivers, replacing its standard Sky Digiboxes and Sky+ units with a single Sky+ HD receiver and introducing a new 1 terabyte PVR.?Sky+ HD is our best box, it?s got a larger hard drive, greater processing power, it?s Ethernet enabled and is VOD and 3D Ready,? Sky CEO Jeremy Darroch told an investor presentation in London. ?This is something we?ve been working towards since the acquisition of Amstrad. Importantly supply chain savings mean it is now an attractive and logical next step for us to take to get our best box into more of our customers? hands more quickly?.
Darroch said moving to a single box brought with it a number of benefits, simplifying customer premise equipment over time, eliminating the need for a second customer callout on upgrade, and removing the double subsidy on a subscriber who later upgrades to HD.
The move that takes effect from today (January 28) has also been brought about by the near-universality of HD Ready sets in the UK market. A new advertising campaign, ?Sky Supertelly?, launches today and is designed to emphasise the HD viewing experience. The satcaster estimates that by the end of 2010, HD Ready displays will be used by 14 million households.
The Sky+ HD box will given free to new and upgrading customers willing to pay a ?10 monthly fee. There will be no impact on the overall Sky acquisition costs because it will be offset by supply chain savings.
?Having one box type means we can launch more new products faster and means we can maximise the benefits of the Ethernet port within the Sky HD box,? explained Darroch. He added that the Pull VOD service would launch before the end of the year.
A new 1 terabyte Sky+ HD receiver ? effectively three times the present capacity ? will enable customers to store up to 240 hours of HD content, equivalent to 100 HD movies. It will attract a premium of ?249 that Darroch said would more than cover the supply chain costs and even make a small profit.

[piptaps]

What is sky Up to? In the report above they are saying they want to start utilising the ethernet port.

What for?

[ianmac]

What is sky Up to? In the report above they are saying they want to start utilising the ethernet port.

What for?

Card Sharing....

[piptaps]

i think they will start requiring that the box be plugged to router. After all sky do give free broadband. Or they will move to IP boxes and do away with cards

[ianmac]

i think they will start requiring that the box be plugged to router. After all sky do give free broadband. Or they will move to IP boxes and do away with cards

It will be great if you could get Broadband through the dish & not have to use a BT line.
I could get BB in my caravan down the coast or anywhere in the world...

--- Ian ---

[.: JaCkPoT :.]

Some one will clock on And figure a way to share the card using the lan port.

[HoTTDubbER]

when sky say they want to utilize the Ethernet it will be to combat cs

C and F lines is very secure way of providing shares and information
being able to cut people off and control and monitor the usage of shares/ card ect

if sky where to develop a system where ur box would need to be connected to the internet in order to you to view
that could effectively kill the sharing of uk sky cards
even if there wasnt any card at all , if sky provided encryption down the Ethernet it would be a scene killer

just a thought ! . . .

[piptaps]

when sky say they want to utilize the Ethernet it will be to combat cs

C and F lines is very secure way of providing shares and information
being able to cut people off and control and monitor the usage of shares/ card ect

if sky where to develop a system where ur box would need to be connected to the internet in order to you to view
that could effectively kill the sharing of uk sky cards
even if there wasnt any card at all , if sky provided encryption down the Ethernet it would be a scene killer

just a thought ! . . .

But this will not be an overnight switch. Not all sky customers have internet. Unless if the internet is coming via satellite. But again that will be only download, sky will still need something to upload the information back to them

[HoTTDubbER]

But this will not be an overnight switch. Not all sky customers have internet. Unless if the internet is coming via satellite. But again that will be only download, sky will still need something to upload the information back to them

nah it wouldn't be soon it would be a long way on coming but it wouldn't surprise me with all the tech sky is investing in to want to keep there investments safe with sky 3d right round the corner ect

like i said it was just a thought ,there is no substance to what im saying here

i will say theres not many sky HD subscribers or future sky 3D subscribers that wont have the internet there will be some but not many

[terriers]

if ur box had to be connected to the router,it would kill off multiroom...dont think customers want a wopping great ethernet lead snaking round their houses...think you guys are reading too much into it....also imagine the amount of service calls if someones pics froze for a second every couple of hours...its a long long way away...

[thered]

i think they will start requiring that the box be plugged to router. After all sky do give free broadband. Or they will move to IP boxes and do away with cards

not possible not every sky user will have a bb connection and lot of people use sky because you can get a signal anywhere no matter how rural

even if they did you could unplug it only new subscribers (12 months ) are required to keep there box connected to a phone line

iptv for sky customers anyway wont happen

[GastonJ]

i think they will start requiring that the box be plugged to router. After all sky do give free broadband. Or they will move to IP boxes and do away with cards

They don't and can't give me free broadband. Why do most people in the UK think that everyone can have, or obtain, a BT phone line? So moving to that idea will lose them customers who can't have BT, and so get "free" broadband from Sly...

[GastonJ]

It will be great if you could get Broadband through the dish & not have to use a BT line.
I could get BB in my caravan down the coast or anywhere in the world...

--- Ian ---

Yes and have immense round trip times. The satellites are around 24,000 miles away, so a round trip of 48,000 miles (thats' an esitmate btw) It works out to be around 0.25 second delay. Not forgetting, from memory that each transponder is only capable of around 40mbits. Add to that the number of users and it all goes downhill rather rapidly from there... Wouldn't be fun on games, but for broadcasting the same data to a very large number of users, it's ideal.

[wod1]

i thought the ethernet port was going to be used for some kind of vod service, i read it somewhere a while ago