SES and Sky extend satellite contract to 2029

The Cush

SES and Sky extend satellite contract to 2029

https://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2024/10/10/ses-and-sky-extend-satellite-contract-to-2029/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Gerry Wicklow

So much for the doom sayers, "its all online now, satellite is dead"

icdg

Not yet. Not yet. But they haven’t brought Stream in for the fun of it.

But this will be a longer changeover than analogue to digital, because they are not offering anything new to incentivise customers to switch and are actually taking away important features (recording!).

fman

What wasn't highlighted here either was that it's just a 1 year renewal. They already had a deal to 2028.

andy1249

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122703225#Comment_122703225

5 years until satellites are out of service …… thats not long.

galtee boy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122703225#Comment_122703225

It's only a one year extension, 2029 is only a little over 4 years away, they will need that time to allow fibre broadband to get to the most remote places in both the UK and Ireland and then it will be Sky Stream only , personally I'm a satellite fan any day over streaming, but that's the way tv is heading I'm afraid.

_John C

I guess Freesat / FTA going. No option for us here in Ireland for a free alternative. The streaming Freesat boxes that can't even record won't work here because of geoblocking. 😪

decor58

I suppose give it 5/10 years, there was an element of the Good Friday agreement were RTE/TG4 would be available in the north and likewise BBC available in the Republic, would there be some arrangement post fta satellite where BBC would be available over the net. There is another option where some of the channels that currently have versions with Irish ads might opt to go on Saorview or make the Irish versions of the channels available on line, or on Saorview online when that evolves.

Atlantic Dawn

I'd love to know the cost per customer to deliver the service over satellite Vs streaming. The advantage with satellite is your delivery costs don't increase as your subscribers do.

lertsnim

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122704865#Comment_122704865

The Good Friday agreement had nothing about BBC services being available in this country.

decor58

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122708647#Comment_122708647

Oh, thank you, that was my understanding. When RTE and TG4 were carried on Freeview in NI, there was talk at the time that BBC would carried be on Saorview. BBC quickly clarified that the signal was available but it was for someone else to carry the cost, not the BBC but the signal could be available, needles to say broadcasters here wouldn't have welcomed the competition either. Anyway back to the original topic.

The Cush

The famous MoU

https://www.siliconrepublic.com/life/irish-and-uk-governments-sign-digital-tv-switchover-pact

icdg

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122704803#Comment_122704803

There are no streaming Freesat boxes that I am aware of. The clue is in the name - FreeSAT! They do apps that stream alright, and the ones that don’t work in Ireland don’t work in Ireland, but that doesn’t affect the satellite signal.

Freely is a thing, but there are no boxes for it, it only comes pre-installed on new TVs, for now anyway.

While switch off of Freesat will be probably largely predetermined by when Sky switches off satellite services (it literally only exists because Sky existed in the first place, and was a happy spin off of the fact that UK PSBs wanted out of paying Sky for CAS services), I can see that there will be some clamour for a solution here. The “deflectors” (a euphemism for pirate retransmission of BBC and ITV services) existed for a reason, and I could see similar services being put back in place if free to air satellite were to disappear without a replacement.

_John C

I thought the streaming Freesat box streamed channels aswell as received satellite channels. Thought they were hybrid boxes that would eventually carry all the channels once the satellite signal was gone. If they don't do this, then maybe they should 😁

I've got a couple of Enigma2 boxes, it would be handy to just drop in free, legal and not geoblocked urls for the bbcs in place of the satellite versions.

icdg

The box you’re describing doesn’t exist. Maybe it should but it doesn’t. The Arris Freesat 4K is the newest Freesat box on the market and it’s four years old now. It supports apps, but all channels on the EPG are linear.

I think there’s a bit of confusion with Freely here, and the tvs that support Freely also tend to support Freeview (the UK DTT service) and can populate the EPG from both sources (with DTT being used for the channels that are on Freeview but not Freely). But Freely, for whatever reason, is not being made available by way of a set top box, a decision has been made that it will only be available on brand new tvs. Either way it’s not an option for Irish viewers.

The Cush

Regarding freely this appears to be a soft launch, not a big push. In the years ahead the software will appear in all TVs as new ranges come to market

The Freeview mux licences have been extended to 2034 iirc so no big switchover like analogue to digital.

The next big change for terrestrial broadcasting is likely to be the move from DVB-T to native IP 5G broadcast, sharing the same spectrum as mobile services.

This all interfaces with the introduction of new services like Freely via HbbTV and DVB-I.

thebo

Why fix what isn't broke. With satellite you can leave it on all day and not have one hiccup in the picture

While with streaming at any moment any hiccup on the Internet connection causing the dreaded stuttering buffering that makes ya want turn the damn TV off.

The Cush

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122710892#Comment_122710892

Money.

Satellite transmission is costly. Satellite capacity and uplink costs for a broadcaster.

Building, launching and ground operations for the life of a satellite is expensive.

IP delivery will be cheaper.

Red Silurian

4 years, that's surely enough time for sky to have cracked a fully working recording solution on their stream boxes. Anybody I've spoken to say that when their sky satellite services go they'll switch to FTA and the #1 reason is the recording facilities.

Life doesn't happen 9-5, some people finish work and in the evenings have kids they need to feed and put to bed or maybe they go on volunteering duties. Some people start work in the evenings. Recording is vital to the enjoyment of television services for these people

decor58

WE use FTA tv and record to a HDD, works grand, dreading the day when fta satellite stops. We don't watch too much satellite TV but it is handy. We have RTE, VM, Tg4 and All4 players through a variety of sources. The issue with recording and players is advertising, most people skip the ads when they record that doesn't suit the broadcasters.

icdg

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122786323#Comment_122786323

The issue with that will be that when Sky goes Freesat will almost certainly go too. The two are mutually dependant on each other - Freesat only exists because the UK terrestrials - particularly the BBC - wanted out of the huge amounts they were paying SSSL for conditional access services.

I think part of the problem is, as the poster above says, some channels don’t want recording to be a thing. It was a necessary evil for them in the past but now they’ve an alternative solution for time shifting, the player services, which also allows them to funnel a stream of unskippable pre roll and mid stream advertising at the viewer.

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122787116#Comment_122787116

But if the market says it wants a recordable box sky would surely need to supply one or else they'd lose a lot of ground to the likes of Eir (example used as their recording solution is quite a good one and probably the closest you'll get to the sky experience) or any other supplier who would offer one.

Freesat has the unique ability to cover 100% of the United Kingdom population with a satellite signal, the public service broadcasters in the UK are legally obliged to reach the highest population percentage possible so I don't see freesat going unless they boost freeview or broadband signal significantly

At the very least there is probably going to be a satellite signal for the UK PSBs for the foreseeable future

decor58

Yeah, so we could end up with a UK situation, similar to Saorsat, where only the public service broadcasters continue on a restricted satellite due to legal obligation. In saying that strange that as a national PSB VM isn't compelled to broadcast on Saorsat.

The Cush

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122790470#Comment_122790470

That kind of restriction would require a few Ka spot beams and Ka LNBs pointing at a Ka satellite. None of that is going to happen.

Once the satellite carrying Saorsat reaches end of life that will probably be the end of Saorsat as there is no replacement for it in place or planned for that satellite position and the slot reverts back to eutelsat.

Eutelsat has two Ka satellites nearby, Konnect and Konnect VHTS, in different slots, but transferring Saorsat onto one of those would require dish realignment