Sky Movie Premieres in High Definition
- by: KenjohnB
- recipient: The Managing Director, Sky Movies
Earlier this year, Sky undertook a complete revamp of their movie channels. One consequence of this was the setting up of two dedicated channels broadcasting movies (including premieres) in high definition (HD).
Sky also launched its new Anytime service, which downloads programmes (chosen by Sky) to a partitioned part of the hard drive in customers' Sky HD set-top boxes.
Sky has traditionally aired new movie premieres on Saturday evenings and, since the launch of HD, initially broadcast them in both standard definition (SD) and high definition. At the time of the movie revamp, Sky inexplicably ceased broadcasting movie premieres in HD on the dedicated HD channels and instead sent them via the Anytime service. When HD customers queried this, Sky stated that they had received complaints from SD customers that they were not receiving SD versions of the movies shown on the HD Movie channels (not withstanding the fact that HD customers pay an extra Ł10 per month for this privilege). In response, Sky added two extra SD movie channels mirroring the HD channels for SD customers. Sky also added an unnecessary extra SD channel (Movie Premiere Plus 1) which shows all the movie premieres on the SD Premiere channel one hour later.
Unfortunately, the Anytime service does not appear to function in a consistent manner for all HD customers and many find that they do not receive all the same movie premieres as other customers.
Sky do occassionally show a premiere in HD on the day of airing, but again this is very inconsistent. They also claim that all premieres are eventually shown on the HD movie channels, but this is usually two months after their initial airing.
With a little thought, and a willingness on Sky's part, there is a compromise solution that should be acceptable to all Sky customers.
We ask Sky to replace the Movies Premiere Plus 1 channel with Sky Movies HD Premiere, showing HD versions of all the Movies that are shown in SD on Movies Premiere (assuming HD versions are available). The Movie Premiere Plus 1 channel is unnecessary as every premiere is shown more than once a day and is repeated for the following six days, giving ample opportunity for anyone to watch/record a premiere. This way, non-HD subscribers still retain their SD mirrors of HD1 and HD2, Anytime remains for those who like it and can be turned off by those who don't, and Sky HD users don't have to consistently wait for months for HD movie premieres to be aired.
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