Streaming services overtake pay TV in the UK

[HEXUS]

Meanwhile Ofcom has revealed the latest UK pay TV and telecoms complaints figures.

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[Ferral]

We decided to get rid of Sky Q a few month back as their fibre broadband, line rental and tv (everything but sport & movies) was coming in at over £100 per month. We have changed over to BT TV which has full record functionality of Freeview channels and we pay an extra tenner for some of the premium Sky channels like GOLD, Discovery and so on albeit in SD. The BT stuff costs us just over £45 per month which is a great saving, we do also have Netflix which can be watched on the BT box so all is good.

The pay tv services like Sky are just becoming a rip off, last 12 months Sky put their prices up 4 times which is what made us decide to get rid. When the BT contract is up I will be calling their retentions to see if I can keep our current deal as it was an 18 month offer and if not we will change to TalkTalk for 18 months with it being similar price and deal.

[Tabbykatze]

Surprising that Sky are the least complained about as i know quite a few people with vitriolic opinions of Sky. I wonder if they are considering all Sky Customers, even those without broadband...

[shaithis]

Surprising that Sky are the least complained about as i know quite a few people with vitriolic opinions of Sky. I wonder if they are considering all Sky Customers, even those without broadband...

Sky broadband is pants, their satellite TV is a fairly robust system though that has gone through many iterations to get where it is. It costs a fortune though. I kicked it into touch about 5 years ago now, only wanted it for football, Sky One and the occasional movie and it was costing £88pm for that in HD and an additional box in the bedroom......I'm still surprised how many people I know who complain about not being able to afford x or y, yet have a full Sky package..

[3dcandy]

As replies to the above - Sky broadband is OK. It's pretty cheap. Talk Talk however complaints are on the rise and they are the most complained about broadband supplier by far. Sky Q seems to be just too expensive, however as a Virgin customer here with 200 meg broadband and 2 x Tivo V6 boxes I don't enjoy paying £100 a month but the missus does get full use of it and we have a nice projector/surround sound setup in 1080p that looks awesome. So for us, although it's expensive I feel it's just about acceptable. Our broadband is about 265 meg down as well

[DanceswithUnix]

...and we pay an extra tenner for some of the premium Sky channels like GOLD, Discovery and so on albeit in SD.

Does NowTV have the channels you want? I think most content is 720p rather than SD, and it is £8 per month.

[Iota]

Does NowTV have the channels you want? I think most content is 720p rather than SD, and it is £8 per month.

Actually it's less than that, if you buy the cards from Argos or wherever it's £15 for 3 months for those channels. Even better when you go to cancel after a few of those and then pay £3.50 a month for a while, rinse and repeat (similar for movies as well). Plus you get boxsets. Watching on a Roku means 1080p.

BBC, ITV Channel 4 and Channel 5's £2.5bn combined network spending on original UK-made programmes in 2017 represented a record low – and was £1bn (28 per cent) less than the 2004 peak of £3.4bn.

Well if the BBC stopped paying over the odds for presenters, maybe they could put that into original programming. As to what they define as original, too much reality TV rubbish, no more decent sitcoms etc. Can't imagine why they are losing viewing figures, perhaps it's to do with the rubbish they all produce.

[peterb]

Well if the BBC stopped paying over the odds for presenters, maybe they could put that into original programming. As to what they define as original, too much reality TV rubbish, no more decent sitcoms etc. Can't imagine why they are losing viewing figures, perhaps it's to do with the rubbish they all produce.

A list of BBC science and nature programmes:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/genr...technology/all

Presenters such as Sir David Attenborough, (Blue Planet and numerous spin offs)

Professor Alice Roberts (Natural sciences)

Helen Czerski. (Physics, technology and natural sciences)

Professor Brian Cox. Astrophysics, Technology

Dr Michael Mosely Human health research

etc, etc, etc

[Hoonigan]

Sky's pricing has been way over the top for a good period of time now.

We're with Virgin Media at the moment. Paying £88 a month.
That package includes our internet (speeds below), TV including Sky Sports, the full HD package and Netflix. We also have a phoneline with them but don't use that.

Considering the speed of the internet package we receive, as well as the reliability and the Sky Sports, £88 is a lot of money, but we get our use out of it with generally over a TB per month being downloaded.

[Iota]

A list of BBC science and nature programmes:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/genr...technology/all

Presenters such as Sir David Attenborough, (Blue Planet and numerous spin offs)

Professor Alice Roberts (Natural sciences)

Helen Czerski. (Physics, technology and natural sciences)

Professor Brian Cox. Astrophysics, Technology

Dr Michael Mosely Human health research

etc, etc, etc

Which is all fine if that's what you want to watch (I prefer reading those subjects....)

[Biscuit]

I buy the sports passes for NowTV when I want to watch Sky sports, other that I think I have a £3 a month fee for a few extra channels on the Youview from Plusnet, but dont bother with any other subscription TV, everything is Netflix/Amazon Prime/Youtube. I get BT Sport free with my £33 a month Plusnet package.

[peterb]

Which is all fine if that's what you want to watch (I prefer reading those subjects....)

But hardly rubbish...

[Wozza63]

Well if the BBC stopped paying over the odds for presenters, maybe they could put that into original programming. As to what they define as original, too much reality TV rubbish, no more decent sitcoms etc. Can't imagine why they are losing viewing figures, perhaps it's to do with the rubbish they all produce.

BBC shouldn't have any of those programmes. Period. It shouldn't be paying for broadcast rights for expensive sports events either. It's taxpayer funded, and someone who doesn't want to watch BBC content but something else has to pay the BBC £150 a year. Reduce BBC's expenses further, cut all expensive comedy shows and sports events and replace them with smaller events that give more people an opportunity to be on TV. Eg a League 2 game instead of top tier and a local comedy club instead of Michael Mcintyre's biggest events. Replace overpaid hosts and stars on almost all shows and replace them with promising student actors/hosts etc. Then increase funding into educational programmes.

Then cut the TV tax significantly, as it will be a service that can benefit the nation and not just those that want to watch bad TV shows.

Also sell the rights to major TV shows and offer a refund to previous TV tax payers.

[3dcandy]

BBC shouldn't have any of those programmes. Period. It shouldn't be paying for broadcast rights for expensive sports events either. It's taxpayer funded, and someone who doesn't want to watch BBC content but something else has to pay the BBC £150 a year. Reduce BBC's expenses further, cut all expensive comedy shows and sports events and replace them with smaller events that give more people an opportunity to be on TV. Eg a League 2 game instead of top tier and a local comedy club instead of Michael Mcintyre's biggest events. Replace overpaid hosts and stars on almost all shows and replace them with promising student actors/hosts etc. Then increase funding into educational programmes.

Then cut the TV tax significantly, as it will be a service that can benefit the nation and not just those that want to watch bad TV shows.

Also sell the rights to major TV shows and offer a refund to previous TV tax payers.

So then you will have to pay to say watch the world cup with a subscription, because if the BBC does as you suggest all the other channels will become subscription. The BBC would exist for just news and historical content and no new content would be made by them. They would also be forced to probably drop the other channels and just be BBC 1. I'd imagine that all the radio channels would disappear as well. Is that such a good idea?

[peterb]

BBC shouldn't have any of those programmes. Period. It shouldn't be paying for broadcast rights for expensive sports events either. It's taxpayer funded, and someone who doesn't want to watch BBC content but something else has to pay the BBC £150 a year. Reduce BBC's expenses further, cut all expensive comedy shows and sports events and replace them with smaller events that give more people an opportunity to be on TV. Eg a League 2 game instead of top tier and a local comedy club instead of Michael Mcintyre's biggest events. Replace overpaid hosts and stars on almost all shows and replace them with promising student actors/hosts etc. Then increase funding into educational programmes.

Then cut the TV tax significantly, as it will be a service that can benefit the nation and not just those that want to watch bad TV shows.

Also sell the rights to major TV shows and offer a refund to previous TV tax payers.

Its remit is to provide programming for all tastes, including niche as well as mainstream, so it can make programmes that would not necessarily be viable in a fully commercial environment.

There are programmes the BBC put out that I don’t watch (soaps in particular) but others find them compelling.

It’s a bit like any other tax - you are paying for services that you might not be using yourself (education if you don’t have children, for example).

Personally I find the output of the main free view/freesat channels more than sufficient to satisfy my viewing needs, and £12 month compares very favourable with the subscription services like sky/virgin that offer very little additional content that would be of interest to me.

And the Radio channels without intrusive and repetitive advertising... bliss.

[Hoonigan]

And the Radio channels without intrusive and repetitive advertising... bliss.

This. So much this peterb.

£12 per month really isn't that bad. However, don't get me started on their stupid "you need to pay twice as much for the first six months" rubbish; that really rubbed me the wrong way.