Forums Forums Enthusiast Forums A - Z Gadgets & Tech Sky Sports Launching On TopUp TV

Hehe, meant to post this a couple of weeks ago but forgot, we are launching Sky Sports on TUTV in a few months, there is limited details at present, but in development team weve been discussing it somewhat, and we are expecting it to be around the end of the current football season, probably around world cup time, but in time for the next Premiership football season.

No actual concrete information on how its going to run and how much its going to cost, from what I can gather it will likely be Sky Sports 1 and 2 (with a slim possibility of 3), and pricing will be between £12 and £20 per month dependent on whether you want one or two channels (so for example, maybe £13.99 for Sky Sports 1 or 2 and £18.99 for Sky Sports 1 and 2).

More guesswork by myself... I think it will mean the loss of ESPN on TopUp TV since they only have 24 Premiership games from next season, and very very likely the loss of Home and G.O.L.D. I can't really see it being part of the push-on-demand service, but there is already G.O.L.D and Home content on there anyway. If ESPN is dropped as a result of this, ive got no idea how it will affect those who have taken the free 250GB box with ESPN and TV Favourites offer.

Unless we are able to obtain some more mux space (there is going to be some available in the future) or Channel 5 have decided to closedown one of their shite channels and give the stream back to us, then I can't feasibly see any other way. This is why I can't say whether or not SS3 will be present as yet.

I will give you more details as and when I hear them. But it does mean finally, consumers will be able to get premium sports channels (though we already offered Setanta/ESPN for a few years, their pretty crap) via digital terrestrial and "hopefully" (im only going on the basis of the Setanta/ESPN model here) without being forced into paying rediculous monthly fee's for "basic" packages before you can have Sky Sports, which I know is a lot of peoples complaint.

Dunno why people pay when u can get it all free online.

Because some people prefer quality over free and would rather have a fair service for a fair price - nothing worse than scrambling around trying to find a stream that works and isnt buffering every 30 seconds and actually has English language commentry, and then outputting a shitty 400Kbps sopbox stream on a 50" television and wondering why it looks worse than a VHS video recorded in LP.

In addition to which, if nobody paid, there would'nt be many professional sports, there would be no television revenue for sports, as a result there would be little advertising revenue... not to mention the fact that if nobody paid, there would'nt be a free-stream market either, because the channels wouldnt exist lol.