Sky own-goal means misery for HD World Cup fans

[Bob Crabtree]

Sky's HD TV service looks set to get off to the worst possible of starts, with thousands of customers not receiving systems before the World Cup kicks off on June 9.

The Register is reporting that supply shortfalls of Sky's new HD box mean that 17,000 installation dates are having to be rescheduled - the result, Sky is apparently saying, of "an unforeseen and very late hold up in the manufacturing process".

Read all the gory details over in this HEXUS.headline and tell us your thoughts here about this unforeseen and very late hold up in the manufacturing process.

[jimborae]

I thought that would happen, Sky are useless, can't even organise the proverbial piss up in a brewery . And Mark Horley shouldn't be enjoying a relaxed weekend as loads of NTL customers are really hacked off that they can't get any HD pictures till 2007!

[DR]

It is shocking, loads of campaigns and other things happening, hyping it up and then they fail to deliver. I feel for the consumer, I really do

[Merlin4458]

ours is set to arive on 2nd june, does that mean we wont get it till during the world cup. Im going to be absolutly fuming if its not here before. What idiots wouldnt get more boxes than expected to just make sure

[Nick F]

I'm sure if you were one of the first to sign-up you will be fine. I just feel really sorry for the people who have just brought a nice new 1k HDTV screen for nothing

[Parm]

Ah, I hope it's not as bad as the register make it out to be. There's going to be so many dissapointed customers.

With what they're charging, they really should be delivering on time.

[pjjaad]

I'm sure if you were one of the first to sign-up you will be fine. I just feel really sorry for the people who have just brought a nice new 1k HDTV screen for nothing

If only this were true, I signed up the first day and prepaid £30 quid and shelled out £300 for the kit.

Just got the call from the lovely people at sky
my install date has slipped , from the 23rd the day after launch to the 29th what a frigging joke.
They are truly PISSING me off.
then to add insult to injury they offered £20 credit as compensation.Laugh I nearly did actually.

The trouble is they cant get the kit from the supplier,
Dont they understand manufacturing and ordering, and the main thing , supply and demand.

I smell a rat here, Thomson are gonna make as much as possible of these for Sky , If I came along and ordered 40,000 anythings and said can you get them by this date then I would be looking for guarentee's etc etc.

Those idiots at sky, dont they realise we are the 4th rich country in the world with millions of subscribers to their crap service.

There is not a shortage of HD ready TV's out there. I know cos I bought one and its lovely and shinny and big and cool and well its now just a tv still for another week if I can believe skys latest line of crap.

So every one who cannot get one for the world cup take heart I cant even get one for the second day of HD broadcsts , Boo Hoo.

Ok I am not gonna die from this but all the same they are a bunch of FU#* wits.

Rant over , gonna take a stress relief tablet and sulk.

[Bob Crabtree]

I thought that would happen, Sky are useless, can't even organise the proverbial piss up in a brewery . And Mark Horley shouldn't be enjoying a relaxed weekend as loads of NTL customers are really hacked off that they can't get any HD pictures till 2007!

While there's no doubt that, if things are as El Reg says, then there are going to be rather a lot of hacked off SkyHD customers, I think that the NTL issue is rather different.

NTL customers need to remember that the intention to takeover Telewest was only announced in (as I recall) October 2005 and only completed in March 2006.

Putting in place the infra-structure to transmit HD isn't a trivial matter - my guess is that both Telewest and Sky had been planning their moves for two years or probably more - so it's not as though NTL could just piggyback on what Telewest was doing.

It may be the case, of course, that NTL had its own HD plans and that these were changed as a result of the takeover - perhaps because it thought that Telewest's solution was superior to its own.

The other aspect is the cost - NTL paid out billions for Telewest so it is possible that it simply couldn't afford the required HD investment (pre-planned or switching to the same system as Telewest) until it had adjusted to the outlay for Telewest, which probably involves loans, rather than being paid from cash reserves.

I have just dropped an email to Mark Horley to see if he is able to better explain why NTL's HD service won't be arriving until 2007.

I'll post here any answers he gives and will also add an update to the interview article itself.

Bob (potentially, an NTL HD subscriber myself - but, currently, couldn't afford HD whether from NTL or Sky!)

[FatalSaviour]

Bob, stop spamming

[Bob Crabtree]

Bob, stop spamming

Thanks - the duplicate is gone now!

[Bob Crabtree]

Mark Horley responded over the weekend to the question, why won't NTL be introducing HD until 2007?

This is what he said,

The main reason why NTL customers won't see HD at the same time as Telewest customers is because the box that supports HD - the TVDrive box - will not be launching on the NTL side until end of 2006/early 2007.

There is a huge amount of work to be done to make sure that this box and the code that resides on it can interface with all the NTL back-end systems. As always when launching new products, we will be conducting exhaustive user testing to ensure that it is a good-quality customer experience.

Bob

[chrestomanci]

I suspect that much of the supply problems are caused by manufacturing problems at Thomson (Who are designing and building these boxes).

Until about a year ago, Thomson had a factory in Wales a few miles from Cardiff. The factory had been there for years and was running smoothly. It was used to make earlier Thomson Sky boxes, such as the Sky+ 160, as well as their freeview boxes, and other products.

Then Thomson decided to save some money, by Closing the factory, making everyone redundant, and moving production to China. My guess would be that the new Chinese factory is having teething problems, which are much harder to fix if the experienced staff are 20,000 miles away in the UK, and the boxes they do make will take 6 weeks to ship back to the UK, instead of overnight from a UK based factory.

I understand that with Globalisation, Thomson had to move production offshore in order to survive, but the timing in the middle of the biggest lunch since colour TV is terrible.

[Lee H]

If these are being made overseas ( i.e Far East ) then there is a good chance that monsoon season is starting to build up.

If this is the case, then the port at Singapore,which is the largest in the world stops accepting the supertankers that they use to ship electronic goods as unloading these with high waves is dangerous.

The only reason I know this due to watching the discovery channel on sunday at 7am lol

[snedger]

If these are being made overseas ( i.e Far East ) then there is a good chance that monsoon season is starting to build up.

If this is the case, then the port at Singapore,which is the largest in the world stops accepting the supertankers that they use to ship electronic goods as unloading these with high waves is dangerous.

The only reason I know this due to watching the discovery channel on sunday at 7am lol

Yeah, great program, especially when viewed in high definition

Time to do some local pub/leisure centre research to find out if any will have got the kit in in time.

[HD Junkie]

I did have an install date for SKY HD of the 29th May....Now it's 15th June and i can't get it any earlier. This has put a downer on getting HD before it's even begun. I now call HD Huge Dissapointment when it comes to SKY. Sorry for ranting on I know there's a lot of people in the same situation.

I'll just have to watch Englands first game on my new 32" LCD (Samsung) in SD!

Rock On....HD Junkie

[Parm]

I now call HD Huge Dissapointment

I really wanted to jump on the SkyHD bandwagon myself, particularly for the World Cup.
But, with my setup it's just not feasable.
£42 per month for top channel package, £10 per month for Multiroom. That's £52 a month I pay at the moment.
I don't mind paying the £299 for the new box, but an extra £10 per month for the HD subscription would burn a serious whole through my pocket, my leg, and the floor. >_<
£62 per month, major ouch!