Clampdown on TV 'Dodgy Boxes'

well are you arguing that no matter how many stream free the prices for those that pay are unaffacted

Is this a claim from Weckler's article or is it based on any facts?

Sky has major deals with cable TV operations and some other operations. These operations will cover most of the market. Historically, Ireland was well ahead of the UK on the development of cable TV and at one time, Cablelink's (now Virgin) Dublin network was one of the largest in Europe. Satellite broadcasting covers the part of the market not covered by cable TV franchises. The broadband bandwidth needed for high quality streaming may not be universally available and satellite TV broadcasting still covers part of the market. It is not a single market that can simply be served by streaming. The cable TV aspect is important because some Sky channels are on the basic tier of channels while sports and movies are on higher priced tiers. The cable TV operations handle the subscriptions and pay Sky for these channels. Sky switching completely to streaming would mean dropping a major part of its business with cable TV operations.

Regards…jmcc

Then why does no one reduce prices the more popular they get? This is across the board, do clothing brands reduce prices when they become more fashionable? Restaurants packed every night, do they lower prices?

No an increase in demand = an increase in prices.

Again your conflating the point, Sky increase their prices because they say they don't have enough customers and blame IPTV for this. Majority of the IPTV customers don't want the product that Sky are offering. So the removal of IPTV doesn't increase Sky's actual customer base by 400k or I'd wager even 50k.

Glasto on the iplayer is amazing with a VPN.

Ive the iplayer going here too...

Read through Weckler's article. There are some areas where he does not, ironically for a technology journalist, understand the unexpected impact of technology on piracy.

What initially changed music piracy was the advent of cheap portable tape recorders and then integrated radio/tape recorders. This was in the 1970s and 1980s and led to the RIAA claiming that home taping was killing music. It wasn't. The same thing happened with Video Recorders in the 1980s with movies being pirated first on tape and then on DVD. The industry efforts to protect video tapes (Macrovison etc) and DVDs (CSS) were bypassed.

So what happened in the 2000s to change things with music piracy? Ironically, it was the iPhone and Google's Android smartphones. They allowed the personalisation of music choice. The iPod and other players made music portable. The choice was still limited to what was on the iPod or player. The Internet changed that.

The addition of always-on Internet for smartphones personalised music and took a major speedbump out of the process (downloading and transferring to a player). Users could stream their personalised content. This technology change enabled services like Spotify and iTunes to grow. Without the smartphone's impact, services like Spotify and iTunes would have had a much more difficult time.

Piracy on TV programming initially meant hacking a legitimate decoder or using a pirate decoder or using a pirate smartcard. These were all hardware solutions and they often did not last long. The initial dodgyboxes used the keys from a legitimate subscription. (There was another hack at the time that allowed users to record an encrypted Sky programme and then play it back through a decoder with a recorded keystream.) When Sky switched to digital, the first generation dodgyboxes used a software implementation of Sky's conditional access module (the hardware in the decoder that allowed it to use Sky's smartcard). That's where the piracy changed from being a purely hardware problem for Sky to a hybrid hardware/software problem.

The user of these dodgyboxes still needed dedicated hardware to access the content. They depended on the user having a satellite TV installation and an active Internet connection. It was a low-bandwidth solution when people still largely used dial-up Internet connections. As the Internet developed, broadband became more commonplace and download bandwidth improved. The improved bandwidth on broadband enabled an evolution of the dodgybox. This made streaming more feasible.

The Internet infrastructure also developed and servers and bandwidth also became cheaper. That meant that the problem of making a feed available became easier. Devices (Android boxes, Firesticks) also became cheaper. That was a price change in technology that changed the economic model for the dodgybox. The hardware side of things became genericised in that any of these devices could be used along with software to access the content. That changed it from being a hardware anchored problem for Sky and other broadcasters to being a software problem. The devices themselves are not necessarily illegal and have legitimate uses. In becoming a software problem, it is far more deadly for broadcasters becuse the threat surface has been expanded. It is no longer limited to single purpose hardware. This was Sky's iPhone moment when technology had an unexpected impact on its business model.

Monetising sports is only a fraction of the problem facing Sky and other broadcasters. The fair pricing argument is not necessarily a good one either. It ignores the competition for broadcast rights. The broadcasters pay a lot of money for these rights on a regional basis. They have to make their money back. The broadcasters have to price their services so that they cover their costs and make a profit. People pay for the these services. When a broadcaster secures what are effectively monopoly rights on a programme or sport, then they can keep increasing the price. What actually reduces prices is competition.

The bidding for rights has, over the years, reduced competition. The rise of the dodgybox and its popularity are, to some extents, a market response to that lack of competition.

There are very few easy solutions and Sky and other broadcasters are locked into a cycle of trying to keep piracy at an acceptable level. That's rarely mentioned in the presence of technology journalists. The broadcasters have to push the propaganda (fighting piracy by press release) at the beginning of any new season's programming. They can always rely upon a favourable response from the media who make money from the broadcaster's advertising.

Regards…jmcc

The claim that Sky would switch to streaming is not mine. I asked where the claim originated and if there was anything from Sky to back it up. There wasn't.

Regards…jmcc