Slashdot Mirror

The 8 BBC channels are not the only ones available in the UK. There is a huge choice of commercial television available, including 3 terrestrial (OTA) channels and countless others on pay services such as digital cable and satellite.

Extracting a tax for simply owning a television set creates a captive audience

Actually, the huge amount of commercial television available ensures that the BBC keeps its output at a high standard, as the licence fee situation is reviewed every 5 years and can be dropped (BBC has to go commercial) if it is decided that BBC content is not up to scratch.

Simon.

In the UK, there is a huge push from sky to sell its Sky + service, which is the main competetion for Tivo here. Haven't actually tried the Tivo, but Sky + is an extremely competent package.

Well, in the UK, you've got Cable (NTL or Telewest generally) or if you want Digital, you have Sky and Freeview (used to be called OnDigital then ITV Digital then bust).

Freeview is in its unfancy and is basically free stuff. I also know very little about it.

Sky on the other hand has tonnes of packages. In short, all the decent channels (IMO) are spread about several packages. Which means that if you want all of them you have to pay the premium rate and get 55 other really rubbish ones.

AFAIK there is no way to pick and chose your cable products too. You just have to pick a bundle and put up with the rubbish ones that come with it.

There was a recent episode on Sky TV in the UK where it had the family 'before Maggie' and Bart was envious of Lisa (and had to sit in a corner for trying to get rid of her), but once Lisa said "Bart" he liked her. Anyways, at the end of the episode (back in 'present day') Homer complains about wanting to hear Maggies first words. He puts her in her cot, closes the door and she removes her dummy and says "Dada".
Of course, there was the other episode where she could speak quite well once it was discovered she was an alien...

Here in the UK c4 shows Futurama at about 6pm on seemingly random weeknights - and sometimes earlier!

I've probably only seen about 6 episodes ever because of this. I know I could tape it, but I'm not that organised, and anyway, I probably don't care enough to bother!

If it was on later, anywhere between 7:30 and midnight, it would get a bigger audience. Unfortunately, those hours are reserved for chick programming like Allie McBeal, Make over shows, and soaps!

I think it goes out first on Sky or e4 at a better time but because I've got a posh old house I'm not allowed a minidish because I have an evil neighbour who puts in planning objections... bitch! And the Monkey signal is too weak on my street.

BBC was down for me and I'm UK based (admittedly our 14x2Mbps connection terminates states-side).
I found Slashdot.org and Sky News (UK 'arm' of Fox News) to be the two major sites to stay up - I also applaud Google and ODP for helping me find the few remining news sites that were up - I just wonder what sort of load Google was under compared to sites such as /. ...

Disney does own ABC, but who owns NBC, CBS, UPN, etc..

UPN and CBS fall under the Viacom umbrella, which includes Paramount Pictures, Paramount Home Video, MTV, VH1, TNN, Showtime, The Movie Channel, Flix, Blockbuster, Nickelodeon, Simon & Schuster, United Cinemas International among other companies.

NBC is owned by General Electric, and other media connections include MSNBC, CNBC, Snap.com, Xoom.com.

Fox is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., whose holdings in the US include 20th Century Fox Studios, Fox Studios, FX, Fox Sports, Fox Family, Fox News, HarperCollins, LA Dodgers, New York Post, TV Guide, and others. News Corp also owns cable company Sky Broadcasting in the UK and many newspapers in the UK and Australia.

And most of us should know the connections that the WB network has considering the coverage the Warner Bros/AOL merger has received in the past few weeks.

I found this a little hard to believe, so I checked out the Sky Digital homepage.

If you look at Sky's Q&A page it states "Of course you'll still have the option of not connecting your Digibox to your phone line". Further on it implies that the phone connection is only required if you want the interactive and pay per view services.

If the actual contract does in fact require a telephone connection on pain of a fine (which seems a little dubious to me) then I certainly won't be subscribing.