Sky HD part of any deal for Living, Virgin1 and Bravo?

Some very interesting speculation over on Media Guardian regarding the possible sale of the Virgin Media channels to Sky:

"While one source close to the situation claimed that [the FT story's] figure is not accurate, BSkyB, according to another source with knowledge of the process, was "always going to bid aggressively".

"For Virgin Media the possibility, even at this early stage, of selling its pay-TV assets to BSkyB is distinctly unsavoury.

"For a start Virgin had to endure a 20-month stand-off with the satellite broadcaster, which included high court action, over carriage deals for channels including Sky1, Sky News and Living.

"In addition Virgin Media is one of the "gang of four" – alongside Top Up TV, Setanta and BT – that made a joint complaint to Ofcom that BSkyB had too much control of the pay-TV market. Selling its own channels to BSkyB could undermine its position.

"One senior TV executive argued that Virgin Media may have to look to "sweeten" the deal to make it more palatable.

"'The question for Virgin is do they go for the sell or look to tie it up with some other form of discussion,' said this source.

"Options could include looking to extend the terms of the Virgin Media/Sky TV channel carriage deal to five years, for instance, or looking to tie in the satellite broadcaster's high definition services to a new distribution arrangement."

Sky heads the pack for Living, Virgin1 et al

According to the Financial Times, Sky is going to be the new home of Virgin Media's television brands Living, Bravo, Challenge and Virgin1:

"British Sky Broadcasting has made what appears to be a knock-out bid for a package of seven digital television channels owned by Virgin Media, offering about 60% higher than its nearest challenger. None of the other declared bidders, including Channel 4, Time Warner, RTL and NBC Universal, have bid much more than £100m - well short of BSkyB’s £160m approach. The BSkyB bid creates a dilemma for Virgin Media, which aims to reduce its net debt of £5.9bn but would hesitate to sell to its fiercest rival in the distribution of programming."

Full story here. At least one company see the high definition possibilities for these US-show-centric channels...

Sky Player on XBox 360 - but no HD

Rumoured for a few weeks and now confirmed: Sky content (including movies and sports premium content) is coming to the XBox 360. Unfortunately though there's no sign of Sky HD services being delivered via the game console:

The video content from Sky will be streamed in standard definition, and will require at least a one megabit per second connection.

That's not to say that in future there won't be HD TV to complement the excellent XBox360 Live HD movie library, but for now it's another mechanism for Sky to consolidate its dominance under the TVs of the Great British Public.
More details (and pics of the interface) over on the Register.

OFCOM pay TV review

Virgin's Chief Executive Neil Berkett has said that he believes that the OFCOM review on UK Pay TV will possibly force Sky to make its Sports and Movie high definition services available to other services such as cable. He may be right but The Guardian thinks that this saga will run and run and run:

"Next week, the Ofcom board will get its latest fix of the long-running regulatory soap opera that is the pay TV review. After three years of argument, the meeting is likely to decide the parameters of this summer's report on Sky's perceived dominance of the market in premium sports and movies. Sky's rivals hope that the Ofcom decision will change the market for pay TV in this country. This it may well do, but whether it will allow smaller rivals to flourish is far less clear.

"Ofcom is preparing to require Sky to make its premium channels available to other operators on regulated wholesale terms...Nothing that Ofcom proposes is likely to stop appeals from either Sky or the original complainants, and even then the basic issue - Sky's dominance of the pay TV market - will most likely remain unresolved."

Full story here
Do the high definition versions of the channels qualify in their own right as "premium"? Virgin may well be arguing that they do, but if OFCOM demand that they are made available at a '"fair" price, that could prove to be beyond Virgin's pockets or what Mr Berkett is willing to pay. As always, you are recommended to continue your normal breathing practises whilst we wait to find out...

Bauer radio stations leave Virgin Media

There was an announcement last week that Bauer's radio stations (including my personal favourite, Q Radio) were leaving Sky, but it appears they've also been taken off Virgin Media this morning too.
Not all have gone (Magic is still around) but most are no longer on cable. So bid farewell to radio stations Q, Heat, Smash Hits, The Hits and Kerrang. They're still on DAB and Freeview, and no word if the TV channels of the same name are hanging around.

"Thousands of HD shows and movies on Virgin"

Check out page 53 of the Summer edition of the Virgin Media customer magazine Electric:

GET A V+ HD BOX!
Our V+ HD Box not only lets you pause and rewind live TV, you can also watch thousands of OnDemand shows and movies in glorious HD too!
TO GET V+ CALL US NOW ON 0800 052 6992

"Thousands"? Really? Where's that number for the Advertising Standards Authority?

BBC HD voted Freesat channel of the year

BBC HD was named channel of the year at last night's inaugural Freesat Awards. This was the voting criteria:

This award is for the best Freesat channel or service, whether TV, radio or interactive with the winner chosen by Freesat viewers. Voters were asked to consider which channel or service had most enhanced their viewing; which had provided them with their best TV or radio moment of the year; which they ‘discovered’ on Freesat; and which they would recommend to their friends.

Hmm. Given that the only other one likely in the running was ITV HD that's hardly the most meaningful accolade.

"Is HD overrated?"

There's a thread and poll over on Cable Forum that may interest some: old debate, but always worth a look.

ITV HD copy protection

Us poor Virgin Media customers may still be waiting for the channel, but there's an interesting story on the Home Cinema Choice site about the copy protection currently in place on the ITV HD channel on Freesat:

"all ITV HD material is currently flagged Copy Never, regardless of age or content type. This means that while owners of [the soon-to-be-released] Panasonic’s Blu-ray recorder can timeshift HD programmes to the hard drive, they are prohibited from copying the material to a Blu-ray media in hi-def form. This is in stark contrast to BBC HD which is currently flagged Copy Once, and should [according to the BBC] soon move to Copy Always."

The story goes on to say that Panasonic are in talks with ITV and are hopeful of a change soon, but this kind of blinkered approach to copy protection will make Blu-Ray recorders pretty redundant if it's not addressed pronto. In Japan, where Blu-Ray recorders are already available, the copy protection permits ten HD copies of recording to either local or removable storage - why can't British broadcasters follow suit?

Twitter added to this blog

Not quite sure how much use I'll make of it, but I've set myself up a NialliVM Twitter account which I'll use for breaking Virgin Media news if I have no access to Blogger at the time. Scroll down the home page and it's below the post Archive on the right.