SKY Coverage

So Sky has lost the rights to the PGA Golf, what will they show instead of the A-League now? Lawn Bowls?

Thank god to the end of turning Sky Sport on in the morning and seeing golf at some Whogivesashit Invitational.

To be honest, I didn't mind that. What bugged me in when there was golf on simultanously on three channels...

And of course they still have the Ryder Cup, majors and various WGC tournaments so those who are interested are still going to have to keep Sky and pay for the new provider.

Most people want to watch the big events so I doubt it would appeal to another 'broadcaster'. Its probably your trainspotting golfer that has a need to watch every single one (and if they do, are probably on mysky or unemployed)

Ramtallica - Part 2 just posted here that the big was won by Coliseum. Not sure of the source of that info though.

No doubt Sky will still find a way to continue to raise prices while content continues to reduce. Eventually Sky Sport is going to be just rugby.

Just had another word to the guys I heard it from (at the office) and they've told me that it was only a theory that they heard round the traps.  So no official source on that sorry, could be way off the mark.

if it wasnt for the world cup my Sky sports package would have been binned. I may get rid of it this year after the A-league as the only other sports I watch from time to time are cricket and the Darts. I agree with others that there is enough football around the world to be able to watch it on a fooball only channel if necessary, and from a personal perspective i would love to be able to watch the UK football championship games more often ( I get the odd ones on Sommet)

Also....

At least there's somewhat more internationals and more live Champions League games on Sky now that they've acquired ESPN2.

There are lots of European Championship qualifiers and friendlies on the two ESPN channels last week and this week.

I'm mainly keeping Sky for the A-League and don't want to fork out for Premier League Pass as well.

A Christchurch bloke has started a petition calling for Sky TV to spend some money on re-acquiring live EPL rights:

CHANGE.ORG

• Petitioning Sky TV New Zealand

SKY TV NZ - FA Premiership Coverage

1. 1. 
   2. Petition by

      grant beedie

      Christchurch, New Zealand

"New Zealand has such a large following of the English FA Premiership and most of them only pay a Sky subscription so they can watch the FA Premiership on Sky Sports.

Please show some loyalty to your paying customers by spending some money to show Live Premiership Football."

Sign it here:

http://www.change.org/p/sky-tv-new-zealand-sky-tv-nz-fa-premiership-coverage

If that guy seriously thinks that getting people to sign a petition will actually convince Sky TV to put a decent bid in to win back the EPL rights, he is deluded.

This and underbidding for sports shows they're still behaving like a monopoly despite Internet streaming emerging as a direct competitor to them. Shows they're being a bit slow to adapt their current model, which has come about from holding a monopoly for many years. 

LOL seriously? If that was true then they should cancel Sky and pay for PLP as it is cheaper and they can watch more games. His argument for Sky to get it back doesn't make any sense.

Sky  - (PLP + VPN + Netflix) = $50/60
By getting rid of Sky, I'm about 50-60 dollars better off a month.

What's more I get to watch my team each week rather than just when they're playing one of the top 4 teams.
(annoying international breaks excluded)

With the VPN there's even high quality Friday night A-League coverage on SBS plus a good highlights package
and there's always reasonable streams for the others, wiziwig with ad block.

The only thing I'm missing is a good replay service (like PLP) for those sports/games I can't be arsed getting
up in the early hours of the morning for. 

And non sport related.  Via the VPN, Netflix is about the same price as SoHo and infinitely better,  BBC iplayer
is free and fantastic and you'd be surprised how good SBS and ABC in Aussie are, it's great getting my weekly
John Clarke (Fred Dagg) fix.

If you've got shares in Sky TV - sell them.

I've also just started using Lightbox on their free trial, and you know what if they can keep getting content it looks like an excellent service there as well and I'll probably support them because it's a NZ company (Ugh Spark) actually making an attempt at doing TV the right way.

Yeah I changed from netflix to lightbox for the same reason. 

They both had breaking bad, which I'm watching so would prefer to pay the local company doing TV correctly rather than netflix to watch these shows. 

You also don't have the issue of possibly losing the rights to use of Netflix at anytime because they decide to crack down on Non-US Users...

You almost had me jono then you spoiled it by mention Spark. After the events of the last few days, are they dependable?

the outage was a bit of an extreme event. Lightbox is a separate service to that anyway. 

Am really surprised at how good the picture quality is. 

I absolutely recommend it LG. Just have a look through the list of shows on the website first before you sign up, to make sure there are shows you actually want to watch. Or just go for the free 30 day trial - no harm in trying it. 

As sky and others release their own service, it'll be easy enough to switch between the different services depending on what series I feel like watching next. That's the plan anyway since I usually take a little while to get through tv series it makes sense to only subscribe to one service at a time. 

Definitely give the Free Trial a go if you can, has got a great supply of shows, and quality of stream is really good (Only had issues once when streaming/downloading on 3 or more devices at same time - Wife and I have no issues when we are both streaming different shows.

Interesting... I'm on Netflix at the moment, but would definitely switch if there was a NZ provider with a similar range of content (and close on price).

Range of content definitely isn't there right now, but it can always improve...

I see it only works on pc and Apple gear, not android. Some decent programmes for sure. If there were cartoobs for my kids it would be tempting althouh I did note it said that at an average per day, there's 70 gigs per month. I guess getting an unlimited broadband plan would have to be the option.

Yeah if watching TV online unlimited plan is a MUST.

Yeah not on Android yet, but I would be guessing it will come eventually :)

There are cartoons, though I noticed most seemed to be targetted at Preschool (My daughter)

we just switched over to an unlimited plan and it was about the same price as our old plan. Probably worth comparing prices. 

We stream TV online, and get by with an 80gig plan. Very rarely go over 50gb. But there aren't any kids in the house...

Sorry- what have I missed? 

Have Sky stopped covering the A-League? 

Can I stop throwing vast chunks of cash at the Dirty Digger every month?

Not yet...

Just Golf this time, but there is some hope now :P

I can see the attraction of PLP for many people.

However, NZ public TV is so bad, that I enjoy stuff on Sky apart from the football like the History Channel, BBC Knowledge, UK TV ("QI" twice a day, "Peep Show", "Moone Boy" etc.), "Garrow's Law" on Vibe (18th century drama about a young London lawyer based on real cases), the Arts Channel, Sky Classic Movies and Turner Classic Movies ($ 6 a month for the two channels), BBC World news etc. 

Sky Movies is crap and you are better off with other options.

I watch recent movies and TV shows for free on the excellent:

http://putlocker.is/

http://www.tubeplus.me/

http://projectfree.tv/

And I'd rather watch the Phoenix and the A-League on TV rather than dodgy internet streams which I tried for a period but it was rubbish.

Also, if you get Sky TV through Vodafone, then on some phone / internet plans you can get Sky Sport half price for $13 a month.

= Sky Basic $47 / month + Sky Sport $13 / month = $60 / month

And you can juggle that around  - right now I don't have Sky Sport but will when the A-League starts.

If you own a DVD recorder, then you don't have to pay extra for My Sky either.

just pointing there are legal a-leGue streams for around $70 a year via live sport.TV.

What's the quality like?

Very good. 

Big Pete....   and Rialto too!

Also relevant to note that with a DVD recorder you can only record 1 channel at a time and you have to remember to leave Sky on that channel. 

I also get it through Vodafone and get My Sky free so a discount of $15. But of course then you do have to pay the extra $10 for HD to make it worth it.

Good Enough to ditch Sky ?

I find it's rare that I want to record two programs broadcast at the same time though - most shows are repeated numerous times.

You can program the basic Sky decoder to change channels - you don't need to leave it on one channel - you can record any number.

(You just press "OK" twice when on a program on the EPG and it compiles a list of programs and switches to them automatically)

So even if you leave Sky on another channel, it will automatically change to the one you want to record.

My parents have MY Sky HDi and it's not uncommon for recordings, especially sport, to fail. Series link is useful though.

I prefer a DVD recorder (I have two with 250 gb hard drives so it gives me more capacity than My Sky too) - there's the advantage you can transfer a recording from the hard drive to a DVD too if you decide you really like it, to keep forever.

Apparently some shows get erased from your My Sky hard drive remotely by Sky TV after a certain period due to copyright issues. 

I prefer to get Sky sport for half price rather than MY Sky for free from Vodafone (and then paying $10 extra for HD).