SKY losing the Discovery channels and Eurosport!!

All hail to Kodi and Openbox

I've hardly ever watched Eurosports, but there's some good programmes on Discovery, Gold Rush and Alaskan Bush People probably being my favourites.

My Sky contract ran out sometime before the footy season started, and I was trying to negotiate a deal with them, and they weren't budging. I cancelled Sky Sports and Sky Movies, and waited for their phone call for a deal(which never came). On the first day of the football season I had to ring up and get both channels reinstalled at far more than I was paying. The Bast*rds!

I've got a kodi box. I wouldn't want to watch TV channels through it though.

Why are they bad quality?

Live football is generally rubbish through my Firestick with Kodi. However managed to watch all sessions of the Sky Sports Darts without issue so that was a massive bonus.

Where it comes into its own is films. Get to watch HD films almost straight after they are in the cinema and always way before they are out on dvd or Sky Box Office. Incredible value for films.

Have also had 5 or 6 boxing pay per view events for free worth £20 each and the stick only cost be £56.

Prior to that I was giving Sky £104 a month. Now I pay BT £38 a month for a recordable/pausable box and high speed broadband with BT sport and Eurosport - gets me Champions League footy and UFC. I miss Sky a bit but I certainly don't miss letting them mug me off by upping prices whilst reducing their service.

^^ the same could be said for all of SKY

This is seriously bad news for me.  Eurosport probably my fave and most watched channel.  World Champs in Biathlon, Alpine and Nordic Skiing all coming up in the next month.  So what are my options?

Personally, I wish there was a dedicated Sky Sports Premier League Channel with its own subscription and you could subscribe to everything but it.

Sky and I agreed to disagree on how much I was prepared to pay for their sport.  I only have BT Sport which suits me as I have more opportunity to watch Champions League.

I pay Sky a tenner a month for the Sky + box which is worth it to me for convenience of recording and HD quality.

I extended my contract with Sky this week before I heard about Eurosport going - watch all my snooker on Eurosport cos its the only place to enjoy a Dennis Taylor-free championships. Looks like my 'deal' was £5 a month worse than it already was - might see how Kodi on the stick copes with it before committing

Just signed a new 12 month sub for lower monthly payments and now they put prices up and I lose 25%+ of the saving.

5 years ago I used to have Sky sports.  Have moved twice since then and just haven't got round to getting it again.  I rarely miss it and I'm about £3000 better off.

Sky never owned Discovery, or Eurosports, or any other channel that doesn't have the word "Sky" in front of it.
Sky just hijacked them all and started charging us to watch them, when everyone else all over Europe was getting them for nothing on loads of satellites. Ithas long been a disgrace that they have the monopoly and can get away with nearly everything they do.

Sky makes loads of free money from its subscribers. Most comes from advertising, for which they need lots of viewers so they'll usually give loads of discount if you threaten to leave.

In November we cancelled citing the expense and inability to afford about £800 a year for some extra TV. They tried to talk us round (There's a department for that), with a tiny discount. 1 week goes by, then we get a call offering 40% off. We said, "No, we just can't afford it". another week and a couple of missed calls and I noticed an add coming on the TV in the break in the middle of the Simpsons, about how there's a 60% discount for anyone thinking of leaving..... I kept seeing the ad on every break of anything I watched on Sky.

I thought, "That's a weird advert, if they put this on all the time, everyone will leave and reinstate!!".
It turns out they can (and do) send ads specially tailored to YOUR box. So we did a little investigating online and it seems they have all sorts of offers on the go. We called them on the evening of the last day of the month we had to give them.... The result?
60% off and £50 back. so we reinstated movies and sport, which we'd cut off some months earlier. So now we have full package, with HD for £28 a month.
Apparently, if we'd waited til the next day they have a 75% + £100 back, but I'm happy enough.

As for eurosport, African cup of nations, skiing, snooker, Olympics (without the back story). A great channel at times.

plus the discovery network gets the advertising revenue on its channels.

Crazy crazy that they even thought Sky would pay it. Apparently Sky did offer hundreds of millions too.

maleuk01.
That is what it says on Sky's website, typical Sky spin.

The thing is, all these channels were all free to air on loads of different satellites in lots of countries, for years, then Sky bought the UK rights and as I said 'Hi-jacked' the channels to enhance its own fairly limited portfolio. Not that Discovery isn't being greedy too, btw.

A bit like ATR. This was a free channel for ages, then you needed (still do) need to have a Sky subscription to watch it.
When it was all analogue, you could buy a decoder, or several. A dish, moveable if you wanted, and watch whatever is being beamed down. Sky made that very tricky by digitising then monopolising satellite viewing in the UK

All these greedy corporations are not just happy to make a fair profit, they have to make more than they did last year, every year and in the end service has to suffer.

All these greedy corporations are not just happy to make a fair profit, they have to make more than they did last year, every year and in the end service has to suffer.

Completely right. Because the shareholders, who demand an increased dividend year on year, for sitting on their fat arses, won't have it any other way.

maximising profit is the practice of minimising value using as much subterfuge as possible.
This is actually a requirement within capitalism as growth is needed to stand still.

http://www.boredpanda.com/corporation-economies-explained-cows-ecownomics/

We don't just take it, loui, but anyone opposing this way of operating things is decried as "leftie/luvvie" or "hand-wringer".
Many people were conned into voting for it, supporting it, believing it to be good for everyone (which it isn't) and still thinking it a good thing, but....
As has been coming since it started, we are as a nation - reaping the rewards of privatisation.

Some of us predicted it, others were persuaded with a £200 gift in Gas shares.

I'll be largely vilified on here for such an opinion, but look at just about every big company, every large private enterprise and you'll see; dodgy share options at inception, friends of, family of and actual MPs on boards,. In return for service cuts, constant staff cuts, profiteering, Tax Money hand outs, nice jobs for other buddies on toothless 'commissions' and 'watchdogs'. Not just trains, all utilities, big (often foreign) corporations, banks, Huge retail chains.
And then the feckers don't pay their tax!