2old4this
Honorary Admin
- Joined
- Jan 1, 1999
- Messages
- 1,658
- Reaction score
- 0
- Points
- 0
- My Location
- Cloud Cuckoo Land
European providers in adopting proprietary formats and prohibiting sale of subscriptions/services outside their respective national boundaries are in clear breach of at least the spirit if not the word of two pieces of European legislation:
(1) the Treaty of Rome, which guarantees free availability of the media, and
(2) EEC commerce laws guaranteeing freedom of movement of goods/services within the EU.
It is absurd that providers can continue with impunity to blatently flout those laws, and ironic that they should at the same time be seeking to criminilise any activity aimed at circurmventing their illegally imposed restrictions.
How would EEC citizens & politicians react if, for example, the French were forbidden from purchasing Volkswagen cars, or the Dutch from listening to Beatles records, or the British from staying in Spanish hotels? These are all cross-border EEC trading issues, just as the provision of Satellite services is.
Sky is the worst offender of the lot. While claiming to be acting in the best interests of their customers, they have actually succeeded in cutting them off from any other (comnpeting...) satellite service now or in the future. This they have achieved by virtue of their total control on encryption technology, software & hardware design, sales, distribution & installation of systems.
It would be now almost impossible for any other satellite service to compete in the UK market - even if they were prepared to give away the box & dish.
First, a competing service would need to use the same orbital slot since (a) the Sky "minidish" is unsuitable for multiple-LNB reception, and is even too small for reliable reception of any single beams other than those of the high-power Astra2 transponders; and (
UK legislation forbids the erection of multiple dishes without planning permission.
Second, since most Sky Digital viewers apparently find it too much trouble even to switch from Digibox to analogue TV for ITV, they are hardly likely to embrace having to switch to a different satellite receiver for another provider's service. But they would have no choice, since Sky refuses to make their Digiboxes capable of handling multiple encryption systems... they have wilfully and cynically designed their hardware to be incompatible with other services. Even non-EPG FTA channels are enabled merely as an afterthought in the woefully inadequate "other channels" feature. What's more, to complete the stranglehold, they have set up their service to be incompatible with other hardware. In order to watch Sky Digital one has no choice but to purchase bespoke Sky Digital hardware (from Sky!).
In fact, even a provider which dutifully transmits from the right (Astra2) satellite, and contrives to stay within those parameters that the Digibox can cope with (multiplexed ku-band signal, restricted symbol-rates, restricted FEC, Videoguard encryption, etc.) will still find that they are relegated to the unwieldy "other channels" facility unless they also pay large sums of money to Sky for inclusion in their EPG. And pay even larger amounts of money if they want to have any specific particular number in the EPG (perhaps desirable to avoid disappearing into obscurity somewhere near the bottom - especially given that digibox offers no facilty to the customer for re-sequencing the channels to personal preference).
I am constantly astonished that the UK government, with grand bodies and legislation designed to break down monopolies, has allowed this situation to arise, and indeed that the European Monopolies Commission has turned a blind eye to it too.
The only reason Sky or any other provider gets away with such a cavalier attitude is that no-one has yet had the resources or political will to challenge them (they are large, powerful corporations).
But the process may be starting. Several countries have now forced providers to adopt more open/interoperable standards for their transmissions & boxes - the parallel in the UK would be that Sky be forced to relinquish their proprietary rights on the encryption & hardware, so that consumers wanting to access other non-Sky satellite services would not be forced to use multiple receivers.
After all, DVB and Common Interface standards were created in the first place not as an intellectual exercise, but to harmonise (and therefore safeguard) the industry - for the benefit of both providers AND customers.
Anyone still having difficulty seeing the issue here should imagine what would happen were each terrestrial broadcaster to adopt their own unique transmission format. In order to receive the five or six domestic channels most countries enjoy, each viewer would need five or six different types of TV.
Few people would find that an acceptable state of affairs, and indeed to my knowledge it has never been allowed to arise.
Why then do so many of us accept so readily exactly the same fragmented and exclusive situation with respect to the satellite industry?
And why are so many consumer organisations across Europe, who normally need very little excuse to kick up a rumpuss, silent on this issue?
Your thoughts?
(1) the Treaty of Rome, which guarantees free availability of the media, and
(2) EEC commerce laws guaranteeing freedom of movement of goods/services within the EU.
It is absurd that providers can continue with impunity to blatently flout those laws, and ironic that they should at the same time be seeking to criminilise any activity aimed at circurmventing their illegally imposed restrictions.
How would EEC citizens & politicians react if, for example, the French were forbidden from purchasing Volkswagen cars, or the Dutch from listening to Beatles records, or the British from staying in Spanish hotels? These are all cross-border EEC trading issues, just as the provision of Satellite services is.
Sky is the worst offender of the lot. While claiming to be acting in the best interests of their customers, they have actually succeeded in cutting them off from any other (comnpeting...) satellite service now or in the future. This they have achieved by virtue of their total control on encryption technology, software & hardware design, sales, distribution & installation of systems.
It would be now almost impossible for any other satellite service to compete in the UK market - even if they were prepared to give away the box & dish.
First, a competing service would need to use the same orbital slot since (a) the Sky "minidish" is unsuitable for multiple-LNB reception, and is even too small for reliable reception of any single beams other than those of the high-power Astra2 transponders; and (
UK legislation forbids the erection of multiple dishes without planning permission. Second, since most Sky Digital viewers apparently find it too much trouble even to switch from Digibox to analogue TV for ITV, they are hardly likely to embrace having to switch to a different satellite receiver for another provider's service. But they would have no choice, since Sky refuses to make their Digiboxes capable of handling multiple encryption systems... they have wilfully and cynically designed their hardware to be incompatible with other services. Even non-EPG FTA channels are enabled merely as an afterthought in the woefully inadequate "other channels" feature. What's more, to complete the stranglehold, they have set up their service to be incompatible with other hardware. In order to watch Sky Digital one has no choice but to purchase bespoke Sky Digital hardware (from Sky!).
In fact, even a provider which dutifully transmits from the right (Astra2) satellite, and contrives to stay within those parameters that the Digibox can cope with (multiplexed ku-band signal, restricted symbol-rates, restricted FEC, Videoguard encryption, etc.) will still find that they are relegated to the unwieldy "other channels" facility unless they also pay large sums of money to Sky for inclusion in their EPG. And pay even larger amounts of money if they want to have any specific particular number in the EPG (perhaps desirable to avoid disappearing into obscurity somewhere near the bottom - especially given that digibox offers no facilty to the customer for re-sequencing the channels to personal preference).
I am constantly astonished that the UK government, with grand bodies and legislation designed to break down monopolies, has allowed this situation to arise, and indeed that the European Monopolies Commission has turned a blind eye to it too.
The only reason Sky or any other provider gets away with such a cavalier attitude is that no-one has yet had the resources or political will to challenge them (they are large, powerful corporations).
But the process may be starting. Several countries have now forced providers to adopt more open/interoperable standards for their transmissions & boxes - the parallel in the UK would be that Sky be forced to relinquish their proprietary rights on the encryption & hardware, so that consumers wanting to access other non-Sky satellite services would not be forced to use multiple receivers.
After all, DVB and Common Interface standards were created in the first place not as an intellectual exercise, but to harmonise (and therefore safeguard) the industry - for the benefit of both providers AND customers.
Anyone still having difficulty seeing the issue here should imagine what would happen were each terrestrial broadcaster to adopt their own unique transmission format. In order to receive the five or six domestic channels most countries enjoy, each viewer would need five or six different types of TV.
Few people would find that an acceptable state of affairs, and indeed to my knowledge it has never been allowed to arise.
Why then do so many of us accept so readily exactly the same fragmented and exclusive situation with respect to the satellite industry?
And why are so many consumer organisations across Europe, who normally need very little excuse to kick up a rumpuss, silent on this issue?
Your thoughts?
