NTL Discontinues Analogue Premium Services

icdg

NTL is to discontinue its premium services on analogue, it appears.

Already the company has stopped advertising Sky Sports and Sky Movies on analogue its website. It would appear that all new premium subscriptions are being taken on digital only.

Meanwhile the Irish Times reports today that Sky Sports channels are to be compeletly removed from the analogue service "later this year". Existing Premium subscribers are being offered discounted digital installation.

The end of Sky Movies might not be too far off either then.

Good point: This frees up six channels on the analogue service. No excuse not to restore TV5 (and give us some new channels too...).

JDxtra

If it's technically possible, I'd imagine they would use the extra capacity to increase the digital channel line up. They have very little to gain from adding more analogue channels.

icdg

Indeed, that may also be a benifit of this free-up of space.

a bientot

More skullduggery in its colony from ntl London, England.
ntl London keeps on forgetting the 'bread and butter' issue in Ireland. The main reason for the large number of cable customers in Dublin, Galway, Waterford, and their soon to be captured new customers in Cork, Limerick, etc. is the desire of the original customers (the over forties) to receive the famous four U.K. terrestrials......
The exact same situation exists in Belgium....
The U.K., France, Germany etc had to invent new stations to sell the cable service/ dth satellite to customers and it is taking years to take off........

It would appear that there is resistance to digital in cable areas because most people don't even watch the basic fifteen and those who are interested in cinema and sports are no more than a few thousands from a total of 340,000 in the three cables cities.
At present only 11% watch ALL the 'satellites' combined in the basic ntl package. Do also note that those 'amazing' figures for Sky News as reported in newspaper business pages over the last week are totals for U.K. and Ireland.
It would be impossible to have 1.2 M viewers for Sky News when the total available audience here never exceeds 1.4 M
BskyB sells its service in Ireland almost on the same basis ( mainly to the under forties who are not too shrill about the lack of UTV and Channel 4) as in the U.K....quantity not quality in packages with the very basic deliberately unattractive and the 'Family' package being its most imporant and successful marketing tool.

Ntl are hoping for a speedy death for the over forties because the younger age group (the MTV generation) will be more like the Brits and will not have any particular loyalty for the U.K. terrestrials.
And they will always be able to receive the local channels with the old conventional house aerial.

The major drawback of digital tv is the fact that the tv set is downgraded to a mere monitor with every channel coming in on the one frequency so no taping unless you go out while the vcr records the channel you might have watched!!!
But the old Cork Communications (now owned by Independent /Chorus) installed this system (in analogue) way back in the eighties in its 30, 000 homes to save customers the expense of buying a tv set with 50 channels and scarcely a whimper was heard..........
There were other reasons, of course!
Amazingly the Cork cable service was managed by a Dubliner and the Dublin service was managed by a (you've guessed it!)Corkonian. How lucky we were (in Dublin)!!!

JDxtra

Sorry "a bientot" - but what has that got to do with NTL moving it's premium sports channels to digital only?

BrianD

A lot! The effect of the NTL decision is that it is effectively moving a chunk of its customers from analogue to digital. Obviously this will yield more revenue for ntl but if they continue with the strategy we will eventually see more subscribers on digital and less on analogue. Then will come the arguements of closing the analogue service due to the "lack of demand".

A bientot has correctly identified the main reasons why most people have cable in Dublin - to get the Irish and British terrestrial channels. Anuthing else is a bonus. I have analogue - I rarely watch Sky One, I do watch Sky News, e4 occasionaly and despite being a music fan I rarely watch MTV (in fact I have written to NTL asking them to substitute MTV with a channel that actually plays music videos). I don't even have CNBC tuned in.

In essence, NTL will be pushing their digital service - something the market dosen't really want but will have to accept.

colinsky

Does this mean they are finally going to stop pre-empting the analogue feed of CNBC with scrambed, pay-per-view events? If so, good good good NTl.

It'l be nice to finally receive, all the time, the channels we are paying them for.

More analogue channels would also be really cool.

JDxtra

I would imagine it would be many, many years before NTL switch off the anolgue services - so no need to panic just yet. In fact having an anologue service along side a digital service is one of the main selling points of NTL Digital!

What we are talking about here is Sky Sports subscribers only. I would imagine they would also discontinue the Movie channels on analogue as well in the near future.

It makes perfect sense for NTL to do this. Why would they continue to support the old analgue decoders, when if they move their premium subscribers to their digital service they can just chuck the damn things in the bin!

And they can free up tons of space for future expansion in the process as well. It's a bit of a no-brainer really.

watty

Sky rightly realised that the biggest selling point was when they added BBC1 & BBC2.

Chorus does not eulogise the fairly decent 38 channel Digital package on Digital MMDS and Cable at same price as Sky's family pack. They Emphaise UTV and C4 in addition to BBC.

In fact though Sky has over 200 channels, all the decent ones are now in Chorus's 27 Euro Digital pack.

Multichannel in Ireland was created for BBC/ UTV.

Compare takeup of Analog Satellite (no BBC/UTV and only later C5) with Sky Digital since BBC1 & BBC2 added.

I'd be fairly sure any resistance to UTV on Sky in ROI is Granada (TV3 owner) based rather than UTV or Sky.

Beintot is Right and Wrong..

Yes Cable only exists really for BBC / UTV etc.

But No:
The channels leaving Analog arn't important to the reason why most people got cable originally. So it makes sense to dump them from analog and have BW for maybe 30 more digtal Channels.


So in a sense RTE was right to treat Sky as if it was Cable and pay only, except with BBC going FTA on Satellite, receivable with a cancelled subscription Sky box or any other Digital Satellite receiver, that argument is obsolete.

And Cable/MMDS may be doomed.

Satellite No Subscription or cancel:
(You own the system, even if it was "free" with Subscription)
12 BBC Radio and 8 BBC TV
About 8 other decent channels (Films, Cartoon, News etc)
38 Shopping channels
50 odd other Radio channels
Lots of Junk channels
Total nearly 60 Radio and over 90 TV.
Maybe all the ITV regions next year....
(All ITV, C4 and Five now, free if you have a UK address for a free FTV card).


Cable or MMDS No Subscription:
Go fit a TV aerial or you have nothing.
They take away their box...

watty

Originally posted by jdempsey
I would imagine it would be many, many years before NTL switch off the anolgue services - so no need to panic just yet. In fact having an anologue service along side a digital service is one of the main selling points of NTL Digital!

What we are talking about here is Sky Sports subscribers only. I would imagine they would also discontinue the Movie channels on analogue as well in the near future.

It makes perfect sense for NTL to do this. Why would they continue to support the old analgue decoders, when if they move their premium subscribers to their digital service they can just chuck the damn things in the bin!

And they can free up tons of space for future expansion in the process as well. It's a bit of a no-brainer really.

I think this is what my Dad has in NTL Belfast. Settop receiver/decoder for Digital and a small basic set of channels "clear" in analog to feed all the TVs. No analog decoder. I think that is the standard there for a long time.

He has NTL Digital Cabe for RTE Television and Sky Digital for lots of Channels + Sky Sport Cricket on occasion.
He is waiting for RTE on Sky in NI and then dumping NTL...

Elmo

You have not been able to subscribe to premium analogue services since they introduced Digital. However those who have the analogue service still have it and may get a new analogue STB if their current one is broken.

Its part of their plan to role out their digital service, which they have to due to ComReg.

Will they be replacing your old STB for an new digital box.

Analogue prices

12.50 for basic (required)
Plus 35 for movies and sport (opitional, you my choose between sport or movies)

Digital Prices

12.50 for basic (required)
plus 15.50 for 35 extra channels (required)
plus 35 for sport movies and disney. (opitional, you my choose between sport or movies)

A bit of a con i think. What if i just want my Sport or movie channels do i still have to pay the 15.50 for the channels i don't want plus my usual 12.50 for my analogue service? Yes.

icdg

There's a discount for current premium customers. According to NTL "If you are an existing premium customer paying decoder rental it will only cost you an additional EUR 5.10 to subscriber to the Go Digital pack".

Sports are EUR 20.50, Movies 23.50 (and you're getting 9 extra channels), and Sports/Movies is 31.50.

patrickmooney

Well I can't believe there are still people out there with analogue decoders in this day of digital delivery.

I was reading yesterdays Evening Herald, and a Mr Dan White I believe wrote a whole page article slating this decision. His whole argument compared the analogue system to digital in relation to value for money. But he failed to mention that with digital, if you subscribe to Sky Movies not only do you get Sky Movies Premier 1, Movies Max 1 and Cinema 1, but you also get their sister channels, Premier 2, 3 , 4 and soon to be 5, Movies Max 2, 3, 4, 5 and Cinema 2. All of these channels are in digital form, crystal clear and widescreen from the summer onwards.

Having these extra movie channels, better quality and the onscreen ipg.....should have enticed those subscribers to make to move to Digital years ago.

God help us all when analogue to shut off.

Mike 1972

I imagine NTL and Chorus (if they have any sense which the probably dont) will eventually have all their Channels available on digital but keep the basic terrestrial services on analouge until most of their customers have TV's and Videos with integral DTT tuners.

One argument for an entirly digital network though from their point of iew is tha it would reduce the problem of unauthorised connections and lapsed subscribers continuing to avail of the service