Yes!
Then maybe British TV channels will make british shows.
Never saw The Wire, but I am told it is rather good. I won't be seeing it in a hurry either, now that Sky has slurped up HBO's entire library in a UK exclusive. The deal - worth £150m over five years, according to various reports - will see iconic American TV shows such as The Wire, The Sopranos , Sex and The City, True Blood …
This is the best news torrent sites and proxy server hosts could hope for....... Surely its time someone called 'time' on Skys abuse of its dominant market position? Certainly the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 have been churning out some very decent content- but Skys action can only be described as an abuse of a dominant market position.
I think part of the reason for this is to make the soon to launch anytime vod service more appealing, but it should also ensure that any decent new shows are aired in a timely fashion in HD. Maybe it is just me, but waiting for high def content to download from public trackers is getting a little tedious.
How about - "We won't charge you for a device to help you view the content, nor charge you a monthly subscription, nor charge you again for good stuff, like movies and sporting events, nor will we constantly bombard you with annoying advert breaks that can stretch a 23-minute run-time to about 45 minutes."
There, that'd make me subscribe!
I dont' know whether it was because of the financial crunch or something, but in my open plan office I hear more of my colleagues moaning about Sky lately. The latest today is them cutting off the end of a film; they sent the ending in to one of those small squares while the announcer gave details of what was up next ... while the film was still running!
But I hear moans about their boxes and restrictions with regular monotony. My standard, cheap DVR recorder works fine on terestrial. If it fails, swap the hard drive out. Sorted. None of this sending boxes forward and backward, registering for this, hooking the phone line up for that.
I actually did the maths on reruns, movies and all the rest of it and calculated that I can get the films I want to watch for a few quid here, there, or elsewhere, and it works out cheaper than having Sky, but also I get to watch them ... uncut ... AND I get all the specials ... that includes the odd series box from time to time also. PLUS I can then rip them down to my portable devices for viewing on the move ... I'd like to see Sky do THAT for its customers.
The only time that my philosophy comes undone is sport, but as I only watch the mainstream stuff I get the major things on other channels anyway.
I'm not HD or 3D yet; I don't need it. Standard def does me fine for the moment. There was a satelite dish fitted to the house when I bought it, but I had it taken down. By the time I'm ready to replace my TV there will be a plethora of nice, cheap, Freeview HD DVR's around to choose from.
Sky? Virgin? Forget it. Not worth the money for me; not even the bundles.
If I remember correctly HBO shows are broadcast without adverts, each HBO episode seems to be an hour long rather than the 40 minutes of show that normally fills a USA hour schedule slot.
How's that going to work with Sky? Their advert breaks are ridiculously long, long enough to forget what was happening before the break.
Yet another big plus for torrents... adverts are edited out for you.
... you people could just find a job that paid well (mine does, hehe) and cough up the subscription. Last time I checked, most jobs in IT paid just about enough for a person to live well. If you are in IT and yours doesn't, then you are working for the wrong company. So, stop moaning about Sky's subscriptions, which are value for money in these capitalistic times, or go watch Freeview/Freesat or bugger off.
Thanks.