Well looks like foxtel aus have now managed to kill off all third party boxs in oz. They had managed to kill off about 1/2 the box's by stopping the use of orange fruity cards but did not managed to kill of the blue cards. Well last night they managed that and now its a total black out for 3rd party box's using nds.
The thing is it may well not effect the uk for ages but it news that's worth reporting. The oz market is much smaller than the uk market but the use of cs boxs in the uk must be of much of a more major of a concern due to the just vast numbers of people using such box's.
the interesting thing about foxtel is that it is 25% owned by Newscorp. BskyB is 39% owned by NewsCorp so it is not a massive leap of the imagination to figure that measures implemented by foxtel will be copied by bskyb. they had a james bond movie out (tomorrow never dies) about a media mogul taking over the world. in real life that mogul is Newscorps rupert murdoch
I would not suggest the Aus market is smaller than the UK market. Quite the opposite actually...the Aus market is much much larger than the UK market. The reason being is that Aus has a population of 23 million and if you want satellite tv you HAVE to subscribe to a pay tv service such as F0xt3l. There is absolutely no free to air services in Aus (or New Zealand for that matter where Sky New Zealand are part of the same conglomerate). There is no BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Film4, Channel 5, E4, etc etc etc which are services alot more people in the UK depend on rather that BskyB. BskyB has only 1.5 million subscribers in the UK/Eire. Try and guess how many subscribers they have in Aus in a country where you have to pay for your sat tv no matter what or you have no tv service at all. I am not scare mongering by the way I am just stating facts. God I hope things dont get migrated to the uk service.
1.5 million sub's in the uk? is that all? nearly every other house i see has a dish up, understandably some may be free sat but 1.5 million seems rather low as in 1990 they were already 10 million subs took out. You maybe right it just sounds very low to me. also you do not get free tv in the uk as there is the licence fee to pay even for bbc,itv and film 4 as you say. these channels maybe freeview but if you wanna watch tv in the uk you still pay unfortunately. only time will tell if sky implement killing the boxes, hopefully they won't anytime soon but will they just sit back and let it continue knowing they have had success (for the time being) in another country?. should be interesting
menace404 nz do have a version of freeview, you pay for the install then its done, not sure on the entire pricing exactly but our in-laws had an install using an official box and then you get some 20 channels showing some of the very latest stuff, nz prime being the best. I was there when they have there install earlier this year and they even have al jazzire news showing middle east stuff during the day. Anyone with a dish can pick it up. Here is the bird its being distributed from. http://www.lyngsat.com/optusd1.html
Not sure about 1.5m, or 10 million in 1990, I think its more like 10 million now. Sky only started around 1988.
Apologies....meant to write 10.5 million not 1.5 million. But still, quits a small number when you look at a population of UK and IRL touching 60 million. 17.5% market share..... Compare that to the huge market share in Aus.
