Hard News: The future: be careful what you wish for
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SKY RIP - TVNZ made the right decision...whether they knew it was or not is debatable, but SKY's business model is almost as dead as newspapers.
The kids are already hooked up to Netflix etc using VPNs
As for Apple TV...even that is a dog...try a Western Digital Live box...looks the same, but is completely open to world...it has a few bugs but is nice and cheap.
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A good point on NatRad this morning is that rural football fans have been thrown under a bus with this deal. Most are stuck on dialup speeds right now and in the future their guaranteed bandwidth under the Rural Broadband Initiative rollout is only 5Mbps fixed wireless.
And there are plenty of football fans out there. My kids have played football against rural Nelson teams for over a decade and the country schools can all field decent teams with no shortage of kids interested. Damn shame for them.
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I'm under the impression that Football, or soccer as real New Zealanders call it - smiley face - is the most played team sport in the country. Rugby is possibly in about as much trouble as Sky...
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Rugby is possibly in about as much trouble as Sky…
Soccer is where the whiny progeny of middle class one child families end up after being bundled out of the SUV on Saturday morning. There, their parents can express their major anxiety issues about their petal’s well being by looking drawn and ashen every time a boy who looks like he might be a bit bigger or rougher challenges their little darling for the ball. As soon as they get a chance, these kids ditch their soccer boots for something bit riskier. This usually involves doing something egotistical and suicidal on a board, like surfing or skate/snowboarding – the level of danger being set by the desire of the youth in question to over-compensate for the surly bonds of over-controlling parental servitude.
Those born of the less anxious or less caring walk to school and still play contact sports with an oval ball, where they discover manly virtues like stoicism and courage in way not likely to give them a death wish in their later teens/early twenties. And because they enjoy it, they are more likely to keep playing when they get older.
And thus, all is good in God’s own land.
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Will Coliseum also produce original football leagues with Kevin Spacey playing? Because I'd be all over that.
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Peter Darlington, in reply to
Those born of the less anxious or less caring walk to school and still play contact sports with an oval ball
With Tom's trolling snipped, he's correct that rugby is not in any danger. Rugby clubs do an excellent job of player retention by making the clubs very family inclusive. They have loads of events cetred around the club rooms, much of it child orientated. They're very good with support networks for members etc.. Football doesn't generally have that close relationship with local families and has a big dropoff through secondary school and even greater in adulthood. Living in a small rural town I'm very impressed with how they do this, for example the whole club turns up to morning Anzac ceremony at the community hall which adds dozens of young men from small to large kitted out in formal club gear to it. Football's not going to challenge rugby supremacy in this country any time soon, even if it is the thinking person's cosmopolitan sport beloved around the world.
Actually, maybe because of that... :)
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I wasn't trolling, I was having a bit of fun.
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You may find the drop-off in teen soccer players is caused by lack of media coverage of the game...which is about to change.
SKY has ruined rugby IMHO...there is just too much.
One of the biggest problems for team sports in general has been our employment laws...weekends and evening practice times don't exist for many...and working/dole-class families...arguably more rugby and league than soccer people...have been very vulnerable
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SKY has ruined rugby IMHO…there is just too much.
Not so much Sky as professionalism.
Professionalism of anything – be it armies, sport, or politics – tends to be the end of mass participation.
Just BTW, isn’t piracy the elephant in the room of this new internet broadcasting model? Now it is right thar on your screen, what would stop Sergei and his fellowing internauts paying for the Super Rugby feed then re-broadcasting it from supercheaprugby.ru for free except for a pile of ads?
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As wider response to this...
You'll have to ask yourself whether you want to pay $150 per Premier League season in addition to your Sky subscription. There is a downside to the disaggregation of content monopolies, at least in the short term.
...and other similar questions: LOL no.
I subscribed to NFL Game Pass last season and MLB TV this year. For this I get every game in the pre, post and regular season on demand and in full HD.
Do I watch every game? I watch all the ones from my teams (or at listen to the radio for MLB).
Is it better than Sky? Oh fucking HELL YES! One game or maybe two per week of randomised teams, most of whom I don't care about (or worse, actively hate). You won't find yourself craving the other stuff when you suddenly find yourself rolling in content. You do miss the other stuff a little, but you get over it (though Champions League not being there will suck).
I have a 100GB cap at home on Snap ADSL (not even VDSL) and I have yet to have a problem with the quality or size of the games being played. The best part, if you watch the on demand version later, all of the ad breaks are removed.
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Peter Darlington, in reply to
s it better than Sky? Oh fucking HELL YES! One game or maybe two per week of randomised teams, most of whom I don't care about (or worse, actively hate).
The Premier League had 80% of weekend games and all weekday games though so we were all seeing our teams practically every week, every game, and it was easily recordable via MySky. Hard to see where the improvement is with this.
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Hadyn Green, in reply to
Hard to see where the improvement is with this.
Well you don't have to bother recording it. Any game you want live (I assume most of these games were shown delayed). The ability to go back and watch any game you want or any part of any game. The ability to drop Sky.
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Hard to see where the improvement is with this.
Personally, I can't see any great improvement, beyond saving me money by getting some competition which will cut the cost of pay TV for me.
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
How it should be. I haven't touched a ball when not on horseback since 5th form, but I can ski in a fast but untidy fashion, ride badly and am moderately useful on a boat.
Typical NZ boys seem to play rugby or league until their early twenties while thriving on a diet of cheap beer and KFC. Then they give up the sport but not the diet and wonder why they die of obesity and diabetes.
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Glenn Pearce, in reply to
I thought Football overtook Rugby in NZ for participation numbers years ago, participation and viewing (paying for a sky subscription) are 2 different matters however.
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anth, in reply to
As expensive as Sky is, it’s a lot cheaper than buying all that content directly (assuming you could).
It depends on how much of that content you want. For those of us who don't care about anything on Sky except Game of Thrones the cost per episode would be absurd.
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Tom Semmens, in reply to
but I can ski in a fast but untidy fashion
Hmmm, you don't have to be a new age crystal healer to predict some sort of relationship in your future with someone whose initials are "ACC".
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being Skyless I'm chuffed to be getting Big League Soccer back again, minus, I hope, the token highlights from the Scottish league. I guess it'll also mean I'm back to my teen dilemma of when to mow the bloody lawns.
and there's also Sommet Sports lurking on Freeview channel 114
http://www.sommetsports.co.nz/
not sure what that'll turn into.
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Hugh Wilson, in reply to
Being based in Melbourne my comments on this are somewhat arm’s length.
The new arrangements are obviously illustrative of the convergence which is occurring in the media, broadcasting and communication space. As alluded to by Russell convergence has the potential to create major implications for business models of ‘traditional’ TV broadcasters , any by extension – although perhaps not in this case, and depending on the associated legislation – the production of local content. Put another way, IPTV marks another step in the leakage of customers, and thus revenue from the traditional, commercial operators. Hopefully this development will shake things up at Sky a little (why, for example, do they screen BBC but not the equally impressive Al Jazerra?), and open the door for increased consumer choice and flexibility.
If there were a season pass available for the Super 15 and All Blacks I would certainly look at ditching my Foxtel sub, but then I'd also need a season pass for the EPL :)
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Peter Darlington, in reply to
I thought Football overtook Rugby in NZ for participation numbers years ago, participation and viewing (paying for a sky subscription) are 2 different matters however.
For kids sports, yes, but rugby's retention rate to adulthood is higher I believe. This may also help explain why we continue to be so good at rugby but, while improving greatly at football, still aren't going to set the world alight.
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Peter Darlington, in reply to
Well you don't have to bother recording it. Any game you want live (I assume most of these games were shown delayed). The ability to go back and watch any game you want or any part of any game. The ability to drop Sky.
For me
1. Recording worked best for me, I never tended to watch it live, it's normally 3am after all. I'm old and shouldn't be up at that time of night.
2. See above
3. Yes, that's quite useful but I'm not sure how often I'd do that. Apart from the odd time that we beat Spurs, Chelski or ManU. They'd always get a rewatch.
4. But I love live rugby tests, Hurricanes games, cricket etc... Can't justify both.That's just me though, it may work for a lot of people. But I'm not sure I'm that different from your average sport loving EPL fan.
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Dylan Reeve, in reply to
It depends on how much of that content you want. For those of us who don’t care about anything on Sky except Game of Thrones the cost per episode would be absurd.
Seems unlikely to me that you never watch any other Sky content.
If you were to buy episodes on iTunes, for example, you'd pay something like $3.50 an episode. For that one series alone you're looking at $14/mth - it doesn't take many shows to start adding up.
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Dylan Reeve, in reply to
Via the Internet? I’ve just bought an Apple TV and downloaded a movie. It ate 5Gb of my monthly broadband allowance. I wonder how much broadband a Premier League football game will take? How big a plan will users have to have to watch their favourite team play all their games? I think these guys are dreaming..
I don't have a working TV antenna at home (we only have a Sky dish and no Sky decoder). We currently watch all our "TV" via the internet. We have an Apple TV and a Roku. We subscribe to Netflix and Hulu Plus from the US. We can usually stream content directly from either service without any obvious problems and can even watch two streams at the same time (Netflix on the TV for the kids and Hulu on the laptop for example).
I'm currently on the Orcon unlimited plan and my usage is sitting at around 350GB a month.
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SteveH, in reply to
If you were to buy episodes on iTunes, for example, you’d pay something like $3.50 an episode. For that one series alone you’re looking at $14/mth – it doesn’t take many shows to start adding up.
Right. Basic Sky (which doesn't include Game of Thrones) is $47 per month, or about 3 episodes @ $3.50 per week. SoHo add $10 per month so that's 1 more episode per week. OTOH never seeing any advertising at all makes the experience much nicer.
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SteveH, in reply to
I don’t have a working TV antenna at home (we only have a Sky dish and no Sky decoder).
In case you're not aware, you can receive FreeView via satellite using your Sky dish. You only need a decoder.
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