Blackout threat to British Eurosport

Sky is going to war with Discovery who owns/runs British Eurosport on Sky.
A message keeps coming up saying we may soon lose coverage of the Europeans due to this.
Go to Discoveryuk.com for more info :shocked:

Overdramatic much? Sounds like the providers clash. Channels blinking in and out from various providers' offer happens all the time, even big ones.

MidnightSkater said:

Sky is going to war with Discovery who owns/runs British Eurosport on Sky.
A message keeps coming up saying we may soon lose coverage of the Europeans due to this.
Go to Discoveryuk.com for more info :shocked:

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What does this mean? So you won't see British Eurosport?

Moria Polonius said:

Overdramatic much? Sounds like the providers clash. Channels blinking in and out from various providers' offer happens all the time, even big ones.

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Why overdramatic ?. Eurosport have been showing warnings across their screens for hours now.

Meoima said:

What does this mean? So you won't see British Eurosport?

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Yes, all Discovery channels on Sky will leave.

MidnightSkater said:

Why overdramatic ?. Eurosport have been showing warnings across their screens for hours now.

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"going to war" "threaten blackout" lol. It's a tv provider parting ways with a channel network, not a nuclear attack. Or Russians being banned from Olympics. A few years ago my tv provider stopped offering AXN channels for a while and cut me off from a few shows I was addicted to. An inconenience which happens sometimes but it's not like you can't get the coverage online, even the Eurosport one.

I reckon that what is going on is that, now that Sky Box Office has closed down, Sky is planning a channel reshuffle.

A few years ago, Sky decided to shrink the News Section from 50 slots to 20 slots to make more space for the increasing numbers of Documentary channels. So, the Documentary Section moved from starting at 550 to starting at 520.

The problem now is that more News channels have come to Sky, and the 20 slots have been filled. So, an overflow section was created in between the Documentary channels and the Religion channels. And it has now been filled. So, a second overflow section is now also in use after the Shopping channels.

It was Sky's own fault for being short sighted. Instead of shrinking the News Section, they should have kept it at 50 slots, and moved the Religion Section somewhere so that the Documentary Section also had 50 slots.

Now that the majority of the 700's have been cleared, Sky is probably planning a reshuffle so that they can re-unite the News Section.

And Discovery doesn't like the idea of their documentary channels being moved lower down the order in the EPG. So, they are threatening to withdraw their channels to get Sky to revise their plans.

And it will work, because Discovery's channels form the backbone of the Sky Multi-Channels package (or whatever it is called nowadays. It has gone through so many names in recent years that I have lost track). And people won't continue to pay Sky's extortionate fees if they lose the bulk of the channels they were getting.

That is just my theory as to what is going on. But, I reckon it is highly plausible.

Incidentally, if it was me, to solve this problem, I would:

• extend the News Section from it's current 500-519 back to 500-549
• move the Documentary Section from it's current 520-569 back to 550-599
• have the International Section occuping the whole of the 700's, rather than it's current 780-869
• move the Religion Section from 580-599 to 850-879
• move the Dating Section from 870-885 to 880-889
• move the Specialist Section from 885-899 to 890-899

I would actually go further and do this as well:

• move the Shopping Section from 630-689 to 800-849
• extend the Children's Section from 600-629 to 600-649
• move the Music Section from 350-399 to 650-699
• have the Movies Section occupying all of the 300's, rather than it's current 300-349

But, that is probably too sensible for Sky.

CaroLiza_fan

OK, so I have been doing a bit of looking around, and found out that the dispute is not over EPG slots. It is about carriage charges.

Here are a series of stories on the TV news site I normally visit which explain what the dispute is about:

http://www.a516digital.com/2017/01/...nnels-could-disappear-from-Sky-and-NOWTV.html
http://www.a516digital.com/2017/01/discovery-sky-dispute-campaign-to-alert.html
http://www.a516digital.com/2017/01/sky-says-it-will-pull-discovery.html

Although they are both talking tough, they're just playing a game of brinkmanship.

We had something similar a few years ago when Virgin Media and Sky were having a dispute over what they were charging each other to carry the channels they owned. And Sky pulled all their sports channels off Virgin in protest.

Eventually they returned.

It was only 5 channels that were removed, and not everybody on Virgin had the Sky Sports channels anyway. So, it was only affecting a section of their subscribers.

But, this is different. Here, everybody that has Sky has the channels owned by Discovery Networks. And it is 26 subscription channels that will be removed (including +1's, and channels that have SD and HD versions) and 2 Free To Air channels (Quest).

Now that nearly all of the UKTV channels have gone FTA, Discovery Networks is by far the biggest provider of channels to the Sky Multi-Channels package.

Sky can't afford to lost their channels, as most people will not accept paying so much for the remaining small selection of channels.

So, an agreement will be definitely be reached.

Whether the threat has to be carried out to achieve it, we will have to wait and see.

Boys, but I am glad I subscribed to Eurosport Player!

CaroLiza_fan

If I have to stream Worlds from a low-quality link and not watch it in glorious hd on my television I am gonna lose my s

edit: Oh, I see Eurosport Player are now offering a deal on a year's subscription that expires the day before Discovery's channels are set to leave sky. Cool. So come Pyeongchang I'll have to renew, at a greater cost no doubt, if Sky and Discovery don't stop playing this game of 'mine's bigger than yours'.

Eurosport player is just not worth it for me if I only use it to watch FS. It's just a waste.

matcha said:

If I have to stream Worlds from a low-quality link and not watch it in glorious hd on my television I am gonna lose my s

edit: Oh, I see Eurosport Player are now offering a deal on a year's subscription that expires the day before Discovery's channels are set to leave sky. Cool. So come Pyeongchang I'll have to renew, at a greater cost no doubt, if Sky and Discovery don't stop playing this game of 'mine's bigger than yours'.

Eurosport player is just not worth it for me if I only use it to watch FS. It's just a waste.

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Is there no other tv provider you could switch to that offers Eurosport other than Sky?

matcha said:

If I have to stream Worlds from a low-quality link and not watch it in glorious hd on my television I am gonna lose my s

edit: Oh, I see Eurosport Player are now offering a deal on a year's subscription that expires the day before Discovery's channels are set to leave sky. Cool. So come Pyeongchang I'll have to renew, at a greater cost no doubt, if Sky and Discovery don't stop playing this game of 'mine's bigger than yours'.

Eurosport player is just not worth it for me if I only use it to watch FS. It's just a waste.

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I only take the monthly subscriptions. It's convenient for me and I can run the app on my TV as well. But I don't like that the ISU channel isn't available now, it was available during the GP season.

Moria Polonius said:

Is there no other tv provider you could switch to that offers Eurosport other than Sky?

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I literally started a new contract with Sky in December. T_T

Also, I'm so used to it and comfortable. Sky was the only thing I had group up too - getting (gasp) Virgin would be like a culture shock lol.

Moria Polonius said:

Is there no other tv provider you could switch to that offers Eurosport other than Sky?

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Virgin Media has Eurosport, plus in HD. BT TV also, my dad loves it, all the cycling also, plus only a few extra entertainment channels rather than the millions on Sky that nobody watches. Suspect Sky may come a cropper with Eurosport, they use football as a 'dish driver' but then they're playing brinkmanship over sports channels. People could easily switch to to Virgin Media and BT, both have Eurosport plus BT Sport, Virgin Media has all Sky sports channels, BT the main ones of Sky Sports 1 and 2 i.e. Premier League football and NFL if you're into that. In the meantime the £19.99 a year offer until the end of January (channels likely to come off then) for Eurosport Player could come in very handy (can anyone tell me/others how they've found Eurosport Player compared with the TV channels?).

I might sound naive, but the providers seem to be acting like immature kids.

Miller said:

Virgin Media has Eurosport, plus in HD.

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But, the problem is that cable TV is not available everywhere. Such as where I live.

Miller said:

In the meantime the £19.99 a year offer until the end of January (channels likely to come off then) for Eurosport Player could come in very handy (can anyone tell me/others how they've found Eurosport Player compared with the TV channels?).

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It's got to the stage that I couldn't live without Eurosport Player.

Eurosport was the only sports channel we had when I was growing up, so nearly all the sports I follow now are ones that were shown on Eurosport. But, Eurosport have so many TV rights now that they can't show them all on the 2 linear channels. So, for a lot of them, the only place you can get the LIVE coverage is on Eurosport Player.

I used to have a lot of problems watching Eurosport Player. It was extremely temperamental. However, then YesWay suggested that I watch it on Chrome rather than Firefox. And the problems disappeared.

A warning, though. Quite often the streams on the Player can start late or finish early. For example, for the first session of the snooker on Tuesday, the blue screen didn't disappear until half an hour after the matches started. And for the Cross-Country Skiing, the blue screen has a habit of appearing before the podium ceremony.

Also, they say that you can re-wind up to 3 hours. That is true, but if you are watching one of the streaming channels, you have to be aware that the channels are taken down well before 3 hours after the end of broadcast has passed. Sometimes it is 10 minutes after; sometimes half an hour; sometimes an hour. You just don't know.

Another thing to be aware of: it is only things that were broadcast on the 2 linear channels that get put into the On-Demand service. The things shown on the other streams do not get archived.

And not everything shown on the linear Eurosport channels goes into the On Demand service. That is particularly the case for the British Eurosport Player. More stuff gets archived on the continental Eurosport Players than the British one.

Those programmes that do get archived only remain available for 7 days. On the continental Eurosport Players, the programmes remain in the On-Demand service until the time the programme started a week earlier. But on the British Eurosport Player, they are taken down at the start of the day. It has caught me out a few times.

But, apart from these small gripes, it is great.

There is one other major advantage. But, I would prefer not to talk about it in this thread. (Hint - go to post #44 in the TV & Livestrean thread)

Hope this helps

CaroLiza_fan

I have been with Sky since the 90's, so going to BT is a unknown for me. Plus my family loves watching other sports which are on all the Sky sports channels. I would be gutted if Eurosport went. It's been a part of my viewing schedule for years.
I'm really hoping this can be sorted.

Thanks CaroLiza. I am intrigued by your final comment but guess will find out anyway, £20 is a no brainer no matter what.

Miller said:

Thanks CaroLiza. I am intrigued by your final comment but guess will find out anyway, £20 is a no brainer no matter what.

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I'll send you a PM later on. Got to do my Men's Predictions before the SP starts!

CaroLiza_fan

matcha said:

I literally started a new contract with Sky in December. T_T

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Ouch, that sucks. Those 2 years contracts are like signing a deal with the devil. But if Sky is withdrawing from a big package like Discovery/Eurosport, it means they're not keeping the terms of the deal and you might have grounds for cancelling. I, at least, had a list of channels attached to the contract with my tv provider. Unless they have provisions for that.

Sometimes the culture shock is not a bad thing?

CaroLiza_fan said:

I'll send you a PM later on. Got to do my Men's Predictions before the SP starts!

CaroLiza_fan

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Thanks. Mikhail Kolyada for the win! (if he can get a +2 for a fall on his quad Lutz at Nationals he's a certainty!)