A little under a month ago I started (but didn’t finish) a blog post about how the launch of Netflix in the UK (and the ready availability already of Lovefilm) created a special situation for the UK, caused by the quality of the Freeview/FreeSat platform. This situation was that it was perfectly possible to hand craft a decent linear, PVR and Premium content service without going anywhere near a Pay TV provider like BSkyB or Virgin. The threat of these component services towards BSkyB was palpable, with BSkyB’s advantage only being the availability of Premium Sports content and a limited number of channels only available on that platform like Sky One.
Various people have complained about the lack of content on Netflix and even Lovefilm but the content available compares fairly well to what is on Sky Movies and for the really premium content you could end up buying a DVD copy of the movie you want for almost the same price as the VoD version.
To me, I could get a very decent TV and Premium package for £250 (for the HD Freeview+ box with iPlayer) and £10 per month (if I took Netflix and Lovefilm at the same time via my ‘Connected TV’). This is the future, componentised TV services where you find and add the components to your package.
We can now see BSkyB’s response to that through the combined announcement of allowing non-Sky Broadband customers access to Sky Active+ and the announcement of the launch of an OTT service targeted at those customers who do not have a Sky TV Satellite subscription. This is initially a defensive measure but very clearly it moves to being an offensive measure to acquire more customers than they can reach via dishes (because so many people either do not want or cannot have the dish), and also a setup for Sky TV not caring about the delivery mechanism for its TV and dropping the association with Satellites. All they would need to do now is allow access to this OTT service from a Freeview STB (Picnic anyone?).
This is the key issue that should be taken away from all of this, the important thing for customers is content, not the way it is received. Sky are taking action here to ensure that all the obstacles to people paying for their (Sky’s) content are removed.
As for Youview, when and if it launches, this very clearly puts them at the back of the pack with very little to distinguish them in this setup.



