I got a text message this morning from everyone’s favourite UK Satellite Broadcaster, BSkyB, reminding me that a new version of Sky Anytime on Mobile launches on the 18th of October.
In the United Kingdom you’ve got three broad choices for how you get your televisual entertainment delivered to you:
1. Sky Television (Satellite dish installed on a wall)
2. Cable (Known under the new brand, Virgin Media)
3. Standard, terrestrial, ‘free’ service
Whatever you choose, you still have to pay the Government a good hundred+ quid a year for the privilege.
Sky is the News Corp owned daddy. They rock. Hundreds of channels, movies, the whole shebang.
Virgin Media comprises the various cable companies (NTL, Telewest) that screwed up to the point they became easily purchasable. They adopted the Virgin brand and, well, not even that can save them. I have Virgin at home and it’s a poor, poor second child to Sky.
Terrestrial services comprise the BBC, ITV, Channel4 and ‘FIVE’, together with a few free to air digital channels.
No matter what way you look at it, you’re not a whole man unless you have Sky.
I don’t have Sky. Can’t get it on my block because there are rules preventing me from sticking a satellite dish on the wall outside. So I have to put up with the rubbish Virgin. The service itself is OK, but if you’ve tried Sky, you really don’t want to use anything else.
Sky boasts a whole raft of innovations including ‘Sky+’ — a service that, together with the correct set-top-box, enables you to pause live TV and schedule recordings. You can, for example, tell the system to record every single episode of 24. Useful. You set it and forget it. Almost like Tivo.
Last year, I went nigh-on-bonkers with delight at the Sky Mobile application that tied in with their Sky+ service. Essentially you were able to configure Sky+ to browse the schedule and record television shows while you were on the train. Just superb.
You know that ‘ahhh no’ feeling you get if you’re meant to be going out somewhere and a friend reminds you that your favourite TV show starts that evening? Well, Sky Mobile fixed that.
Until I moved and found I couldn’t get Sky.
So to all those in the UK who are lucky enough to have Sky, do take a trip over to the Sky Mobile site on the 18th and get yourself the latest version on to your handset.
I was very excited when Sky by Mobile came along, but it’s had a bit of a checkered past. It supported limited handsets (not mine) for a long time although I managed to get round this and start using it – until they broke it again. Now I can access the service and set my Sky+ box etc, which is nice (although I can already do it with my Slingbox without being dependent on Sky) but I can’t watch their channels on my handset through their service because that depends on them having done a deal with your operator. Not a problem really (thanks again, Sling Media) but could be bloody annoying for many people. It’s great innovation, but they haven’t gone about it in the perfect way. I await the update with baited breath…
In defense of Virgin Media . . . Virgin have a V+ box which can record two other channels while watching a third, and also boasts a 160 gig hard drive instead of the 80 gig on Sky. Also what about all the thousands of hours of TV on demand and catch up TV?