Discovery Channels Might Disappear From Sky

[SpacePhoenix]

Anyone who's got Sky, it looks like the Discovery Network Channels might be removed from Sky:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/sky-viewers-lose-12-channels-9693860

Sky and Discovery have become engaged in a public fight after negotiations over a new carriage deal broke down.

The Discovery channels may now be pulled from the British service at the end of the month.

The channels that might be removed appear to be:

• Discovery Channel
• TLC
• Eurosport 1
• Eurosport 2
• Animal Planet
• Investigation Discovery
• DMAX
• Discovery Turbo
• Discovery Shed
• Discovery Science
• Discovery History
• Home & Health

 

[Howardh]

Other than Eurosport, judging by the TV guides, Discovery's channels have gone down the pan regarding content.
Bloke enters shed and has look round = High end documentary on a pay-TV channel.

Eurosport's available as a web/app player, with far more content and currently £20. For a year.

 

[infobleep]

Other than Eurosport, judging by the TV guides, Discovery's channels have gone down the pan regarding content.
Bloke enters shed and has look round = High end documentary on a pay-TV channel.

Eurosport's available as a web/app player, with far more content and currently £20. For a year.

I didn't know Eurosport and Discovery channel were linked.

I pay £2.99 a month for Eurosport online as you get British Eurosport 1 and 2 and all the live broadcast feed channels without commentary.

What you don't get though is Eurosport International. So when British Eurosport decide the Tennis is more important than the Skiing, you can't switch to Eurosport international to see the Skiing with commentary, you have to watch the live feed without commentary.

I must say I do like have access to this way vers Sky or Virgin Media et al. I avoid paying for all the other channels I don't want and I get live feeds. Less is more.

I see online Eurosport claims to be £5.99 a month. It seems they have never increased my monthly subscription. I'm not complaining.

 

[Howardh]

I didn't know Eurosport and Discovery channel were linked.

I pay £2.99 a month for Eurosport online as you get British Eurosport 1 and 2 and all the live broadcast feed channels without commentary.

What you don't get though is Eurosport International. So when British Eurosport decide the Tennis is more important than the Skiing, you can't switch to Eurosport international to see the Skiing with commentary, you have to watch the live feed without commentary.

I must say I do like have access to this way vers Sky or Virgin Media et al. I avoid paying for all the other channels I don't want and I get live feeds. Less is more.

I see online Eurosport claims to be £5.99 a month. It seems they have never increased my monthly subscription. I'm not complaining.

In my little world, sport without commentary is worth paying double for Yes, I also have Player @ 2.99/month. Don't watch that often, but don't feel compelled to as it's that cheap. Can see the price going up once they start showing the Olympics....

 

[infobleep]

In my little world, sport without commentary is worth paying double for Yes, I also have Player @ 2.99/month. Don't watch that often, but don't feel compelled to as it's that cheap. Can see the price going up once they start showing the Olympics....

Well I'm hoping as they haven't put my prices up yet, despite it saying it's £5.99 a month online, that they won't.

I don't watch that often mywelf either. I got it for the skiing but I'm not always in in order to watch it.

I think it's worth £2.99 even for the amount I do watch. I've even got to watch Dave Ryder, the British skiier, ski when British Eurosport 1 or 2 had gone off to some other sport. So I got to watch a British skiier when people with the TV packages couldn't. As Sky might say Believe in Better.

Dave Ryding is good though and as he's improved he's gone up the ranlings
Thus he makes it into the Eurosport coverage.

Altjough at the last Slalom in Kitzbuhel, he was leading after the first leg. The second leg wasn't due to be broadcast on British Eurosport at all until highlights mid afternoon. Instead was the Australian onpen tennis or Snooker highlights followed by the live final.

People with International Eurosport could watch it but getting that in the UK isn't straight forward. So I was resigned to watching it with no commentary, thinking Sky viewers and others will miss this great event. No British skiier has won a world cup race and if they do, no Sky viewer will see it live, unless they resort to other means.

However at some point towards the end of the race, Eurosport saw sense and took off the tennis to show the skiing. Unless one stayed to watch the tennis, one would not have known this would happen, so probably still missed it.

By chance I was searching for Dave Ryding's Skiing page on Facebook and saw a post which alerted me to the fact it was now on British Eurosport so I switched to the commentary.

Dave came second but that was amazing as Marcel Hirscher won and he's won over 100 races. The weather was fair to all competitors I believe so no weather advantage to Dave either.

That is why I happily pay £2.99 a month to Eurosport.

Interestingly Eurosport use to show the Olympics along with the BBC but I assume the rights holders changing their selling tactics and only the BBC showed the last one. Now it's been sold to Eurosport themselves so who knows what will happen. Some has to be shown free to air by law of course. I don't know what's happened with the Paralympics.

 

[miami]

The Sky Complete bundle comes in at £960 a year. Even the cheapest one is £264 a year.

In comparison Amazon Prime is £80 a year, Netflix is £84 a year, BBC is £145.50 a year. Do people really still pay for sky?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Sky's business model is dead with the Internet, just as linear TV is other than rolling news. Why would people simply not procure the programmes directly from the company producing/commissioning them?

 

[infobleep]

Paid over £1000 for my motorised satellite setup. I had to have one faulty part replaced at another coat of £500. I get all the free TV from around Europe, including F1 on German TV channel, RTL. That to me is far cheaper than Sky in the longer term.

 

[miami]

Sky's business model is dead with the Internet, just as linear TV is other than rolling news. Why would people simply not procure the programmes directly from the company producing/commissioning them?

It will take a long time before the majority of people turn away from linear tv on the whole. I'm not so sure about rolling news's future on a channel basis - I guess wallpaper tvs in offices perhaps.

Linear Radio seems to be thriving though.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Radio is different, though, as it tends to be background content. TV, and Radio 4, are programme based - and indeed all my R4 listening is by way of the iPlayer and podcasts.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Howardh]

Paid over £1000 for my motorised satellite setup. I had to have one faulty part replaced at another coat of £500. I get all the free TV from around Europe, including F1 on German TV channel, RTL. That to me is far cheaper than Sky in the longer term.

Most if not all of those FTA channels are available over the web (like our BBC) without the cost of dishes! Of course, some will be geo-blocked, but any half-decent tech forum will explain how (easy it is) to unblock. Don't think it's even "illegal" to unblock a legal stream.

The only real difficulty is knowing where on the web to look, not really tried it myself, but search engines, perseverance and putting in "bookmarks" when found!

So I'll admit, satellite is the easy way. Also the most expensive!

 

[richw]

I'll miss wheeler Dealer with Mike brewer and Ed China. Nothing else going will bother me

 

[507021]

I'm glad I've got a Virgin Media package for television, phone and internet. I don't watch the Discovery Channels all the time, but there are some decent programmes that interest me from time to time. Even so, I am still considering getting a Netflix subscription in the future.

 

[Bevan Price]

The Sky Complete bundle comes in at £960 a year. Even the cheapest one is £264 a year.

In comparison Amazon Prime is £80 a year, Netflix is £84 a year, BBC is £145.50 a year. Do people really still pay for sky?

I avoid paying anything that puts money in the M**doch family wallets.

 

[507021]

I avoid paying anything that puts money in the M**doch family wallets.

It's the same in my house too.

 

[miami]

It's the same in my house too.

Don't you get sky channels with Virgin?

 

[miami]

I avoid paying anything that puts money in the M**doch family wallets.

It's tricky, about 6% of sky's revenue - £520m a year - comes from advertising, and many large companies, including I'm sure all the supermarkets, pay Murdoch for that. They get the money by raising prices for everyone in the UK, so alas we all pay about £20 per household per year to Sky.

 

[thejuggler]

I'll miss wheeler Dealer with Mike brewer and Ed China. Nothing else going will bother me

Quest in freesat for that particular fix. I saw some of the more recent series on Discovery Turbo whilst away at Christmas and like all shows its best times were in the early days.

 

[507021]

Don't you get sky channels with Virgin?

To be honest Paul, I don't know, because I rarely watch the TV anyway. I'm not sure what channel package my Dad asked for, but I'm not sure if that makes any difference or not. I definitely know we haven't got the sports package, though.

 

[furnessvale]

Quest in freesat for that particular fix. I saw some of the more recent series on Discovery Turbo whilst away at Christmas and like all shows its best times were in the early days.

I get Really on Freesat but I don't think I can get Quest.

I will double check when the programme I am watching ends.

 

[Kite159]

Quest in freesat for that particular fix. I saw some of the more recent series on Discovery Turbo whilst away at Christmas and like all shows its best times were in the early days.

That be interesting

I agree some of the earlier series where they were fixing up more 'everyday' cars on a tighter budget are probably better than some of the modern ones spending £30K to do up a limited edition American sports car.

 

[SpacePhoenix]

Time Team is a good series on Discovery History but I think it's one of them series that someone will either love or hate with not much middle ground. There used to be some good motorsport on Eurosport, the Europa Truck Trial (might have actually had a different name), tractor pulling and one event, don't know the name but they had to get as far as they could up a very, very steep hill

 

[furnessvale]

Quest in freesat for that particular fix. I saw some of the more recent series on Discovery Turbo whilst away at Christmas and like all shows its best times were in the early days.

I have looked and I cannot receive Quest on my unlocked Sky box.

I would have considered that this may be a problem with using an unlocked Sky box rather than a dedicated Freesat box, but I have cross referenced what Freesat claim to send with what my box receives.

My box receives everything Freesat claim to send. Freesat do not mention Quest on their website.

 

[Howardh]

I have looked and I cannot receive Quest on my unlocked Sky box.

I would have considered that this may be a problem with using an unlocked Sky box rather than a dedicated Freesat box, but I have cross referenced what Freesat claim to send with what my box receives.

My box receives everything Freesat claim to send. Freesat do not mention Quest on their website.

Isn't Quest on freeview? Channel 37??

 

[furnessvale]

Isn't Quest on freeview? Channel 37??

Ah! Freeview is different. I live in an area served by a local mast.

Just like the bad old days of analogue signals, we only get a few channels and Quest isn't one of them.

However they do see fit to waste bandwidth on things like Rabbit and Gay Rabbit rather than giving us useful channels.

 

[dgl]

Isn't Quest on freeview? Channel 37??

Yes, Quest is not currently on freesat but is available on freeview, a lot of it is to do with the original satellites used for broadcast covered a larger area than just the U.K. and caused problems with program licencing and adverts. It is also the reason why BBC/ITV/C4/C5 were originally encrypted on SKY.
The newer/replacement satellites such as Astra 2D don't have this problem as the beam is pretty much UK only.

 

[Howardh]

Yes, Quest is not currently on freesat but is available on freeview, a lot of it is to do with the original satellites used for broadcast covered a larger area than just the U.K. and caused problems with program licencing and adverts. It is also the reason why BBC/ITV/C4/C5 were originally encrypted on SKY.
The newer/replacement satellites such as Astra 2D don't have this problem as the beam is pretty much UK only.

Ooh, does that mean when I visit the south of Spain we are now spared the deluge of "Sky Sports" bars?? If so...ace!! The place I usually go has no "English/British/Irish" bars so don't really know the situation today.

 

[Howardh]

Ah! Freeview is different. I live in an area served by a local mast.

Just like the bad old days of analogue signals, we only get a few channels and Quest isn't one of them.

However they do see fit to waste bandwidth on things like Rabbit and Gay Rabbit rather than giving us useful channels.

That's freeview lite than? If so then the only way to access all channels is satellite or cable. And does that mean you've missed my advert on......

 

[furnessvale]

That's freeview lite than? If so then the only way to access all channels is satellite or cable. And does that mean you've missed my advert on......

Yes it has to be satellite, no cable out in the sticks, but I got shut of Sky some time ago as the price kept going up.

I miss a few documentary channels but then again, when I first watched TV there was ONE channel and that was only for a few hours a day! I have several dozen US railroad, canals and old lorry DVDs to keep me going.

Should I know about this advert then?

 

[dgl]

Ooh, does that mean when I visit the south of Spain we are now spared the deluge of "Sky Sports" bars?? If so...ace!! The place I usually go has no "English/British/Irish" bars so don't really know the situation today.

Possibly although I haven't checked which satellite at 28.2°E that sky sports uses and fringe reception can be had if larger dishes are used and it (unfortunately) might be able to use the internet to receive it.

Interestingly in the EU if you can receive it you can watch it and even with permission (I believe only of the country it is being rebroadcast in not the original broadcaster) rebroadcast it, so used to have places in Spain that had a high level of British occupation setting up basic TV relays (i.e. for CH1/2/3/4) that were fed from the normal DBS satellite feeds.

And as for Freeview lite, it uses 3 'channels', 1 is used for HD/DVB2-T and the other 2 for normal DVB-T TV, the main stations/relays (ones that serve major cities generally) also have variations in the amount of TV channels but always use a minimum of 6 'channels' with 7/8/9 if they have low power local multiplexes and the new MUX7/8. (fyi 'channels' are the blocks of frequencies used to transmit TV)

Examples of this are the adjacent transmitters Stockland Hill in SE Devon and Rowridge IoW. Stockland Hil transmitter has channels 22/23/25/26/28/29 whilst Rowridge has the extra multiplexes so has 21/22/24/25/27/28/29/31/37 so you would receive more channels) .

Also some of the extra channels that have been mentioned that are still carried on Freeview lite are just MHEG5 'text' channels so use hardly any bandwidth, not enough for any other channels.