Lewis Kitchenham

Television Pops out of ground like magic!

Changes in the last 10 years of TV❖ The size of peoples TV screens have increased

dramatically over time and it’s changed everything.

❖ TV has came a long way from having 4 channels. Today we have subscription services such as Virgin Media and Sky, we also have free services like Freeview. All of which contain far more channels, especially Sky and Virgin which contain over 300 hundred channels.

❖ This is because the market trend was for more channels and more choice, therefore we were given more choice.

❖ Even though many of us pay a fair amount of money each month to have huge TV packages, we may only watch 5-10 channels ever. I personally only ever watch Comedy central or E4 even though I have over 400 channels to choose from.

Changes in the last 10 years of TV❖ If people are going out whilst the last episode

of their favourite drama is going to come on that evening then they're going to be annoyed they have missed it.

❖ To accommodate for this Sky gave use the Sky+ box and Virgin gave us the V+ Box. So now we can record our favourite shows whenever we like. However we can only record 3 shows simultaneously.

❖ Later a new feature was introduced, Series Link. This meant we didn't have to set every individual episode of Eastenders to record anymore, we could bulk record every Eastenders that was aired.

Changes in the last 10 years of TV❖ All was good recording TV shows until you

forgot to record your favourite show whilst you were out.

❖ Therefore Sky and Virgin gave us on demand viewing where we could watch the last 7 days of selected TV shows even if you hadn't recorded them.

❖ Also thanks to the progression on mobile devices like iPones and iPads etc, we could set out TV boxes to record shows when we were out and about via the Sky and Virgin apps. This meant if we forgot to record a programme that might not be on demand, we could still watch it.

Changes in the last 10 years of TV❖ People were still managing to miss the TV

shows they loved even when they were in their own living room in front of their TV! Whenever the phone rang or there doorbell well you would be missing crucial seconds of the drama that was about to unfold on Eastenders.

❖ To solve this Virgin and Sky gave us the omnipotent power to pause and rewind LIVE TV! From now on whenever the phone rang you no longer had to have a resentful conversation with the distraction on the the other end of the phone, you could simply pause and pick up from where you left of!

Changes in the last 10 years of TV

❖ Sky and Virgin have always been in competition to bring customers, the biggest TV packages with the most features and the best phone and broadband service.

❖ With the customers demand for faster and faster internet speed to feed their growing online lives, Virgin edged further and further ahead than Sky thanks to fibre optic broadband. Virgin can also supply you with mobile phones as part of you package too. Sky can believe in better all it wants, but it isn’t.

❖ Virgin can now deliver up to 152mb/s through a fibre optic cable, whereas Sky offers a less appetising 17mb through a copper phone line. It’s a bit upsetting really.

❖ To be honest, most of us don't need barely any of this stuff, we don't need so many channels, we don't need to have have 10 different ways of watching the same programme and we probably wont use always use our 152mb/s download speeds. However the market trend is to always to have more choice of TV and faster and faster broadband therefore Sky, Virgin and now BT and other smaller providers will continue to bring us as much as they can.

Sky vs Virgin

Changes in the last 10 years of TV❖ Now that everyone has an smart phone or tablet

etc, we demand that we can watch TV on the go on out mobile devices. Mobile technology has developed to the stage we have big enough high quality screens to view TV shows, this has pushed companies to bring us apps like BBC iPlayer, 4oD, ITV Player, Netflix, etc.

❖ Even though we are paying for on demand services and our TV boxes that can record all the programmes for us, we still resort to the free apps to watch the last 7 days of TV.

❖ Apps like Netflix, Now TV and Blinkbox all all monthly subscription services that we pay even more for even though our TV packages give us all the programmes and films we want, just so we can take the shows out of our living rooms.

Changes in the last 10 years of TV❖ The TV itself has driven many of the changes in the TV industry.

❖ When large HD screens were made available to consumers there were no HD channels on air, so you couldn't display a HD picture on you TV. Because of this new demand for HD channels, slowly the big broadcasters all started airing replica channels in HD.

❖ The consumers could now purchase HD channels at an extra cost. You can get more HD channels when you buy more expensive ‘Bundles’. Although we could view the exact same content in SD for a much cheaper price, we all payed extra of HD

❖ When 3D TVs made a brief appearance, there was very little you could watch in 3D except for the occasional film that was released in 3D. Because of the demand for more 3D content Sky launched Sky 3D. Now the 3D hype has come and gone, it remains the only 3D channel.

❖ Now there are 4K TVs it only makes sense that soon there will be a high enough demand for broadcasters to create 4K channels.

❖ Sky was founded in 1989 by Rupert Murdoch, the chairman and CEO of News Corp. It used satellites to broadcast the 4 free channels that were available at the time. It was a year later the company made its most significant merge with its rivals British Satellite Broadcasting, BSB. The result of this horizontal integration created British Sky Broadcasting, BSkyB.

❖ By 1991 Sky started to create its own exclusive content by buying the rights to air live football on a new channel, Sky Sports. In 1994 Sky offered the first multichannel subscription service to the UK.

❖ The company is privately owned by shareholders and the current share prices are 924.00p. Sky makes its money commercially by selling advertising space on its TV channels. It also runs a subscription service where people pay to be provided with TV channels, Broadband and line rental.

❖ Even though Sky created the channel Sky1, Ofcom decided Sky had the monopoly on Sky1 as you had to have a Sky subscription to access it. Therefore it had to be offered to other companies. Companies bought the license to use Sky 1 on their services but Virgin advertised the fact they had Sky1 which was against the agreement with Sky therefore they were sued by Sky.

❖ Virgin media was formed in November 2006 when a deal was signed with Sir Richard Branson to license the Virgin brand to NTL Telewest. This meant by February 2007, the entire company and its products were rebranded as Virgin. NTL’s first venture with the Virgin group was VirginNet in 1996 which provide broadband to over half a million UK customers.

❖ NTL Telewest was originally formed as a result of horizontal integration between cable phone and broadband providers NTL inc and Telewest in March 2006

❖ It is the only company in the UK to have services that include Line Rental, TV, Broadband and Mobile phone services.

❖ It is a privately owned company owned by the shareholders. The largest shareholder is Liberty global (a large telecommunications company) making Virgin Media one of their subsidiaries.