[Rdd]

I think the issue now that it isn't Sky or nothing.    There is so much content out there the fear of missing out on big shows has almost gone because if you're missing something on one platform you're likely finding content to watch elsewhere - and people are happy to drop in on a service for a month or two at a later date and watch a series then rather than watch it live.

I really don't get now how Sky can justify their prices when even through NOW you can pretty much get all their core channels for probably half the price - and even that is priced significantly above where the newcomers in the market are.

In fairness to Sky you are paying not just to receive six million channels and the original content but you are also paying for the product - which is the Sky equipment.  It would have been so easy to just take the money and knock out some awful, slow cheap piece of crap off the shelf that required rebooting every 10 minutes.

But they didn't.  The Sky+HD boxes are (were!) made in-house by them (previously by Amstrad, until they bought them out) and there is a premium feeling to the hardware offering, even though those Sky+HD boxes (that they still support) are best part of 15 years old now and look ostensibly chunky compared to what you can get these days, but of course Live pause wasn't new when Sky introduced Sky+ - TIVO had been doing it for a while, though Sky popularised the concept.

For NOW the offering is the core channels and the on-demand, plus you can watch it on all kinds of devices.  Sky?  Need a dish and a piece of kit.  Yes I know Sky Stream is a thing but that's just NOW on steroids with knobs on and in new packaging to boot.

Absolutely, and Sky’s new selling point in the steaming age is being the “content aggregator”, the one place you can find everything. And it does it very well and it’s only when you’ve left that you appreciate how good a piece of kit Sky Q is. Sky Signature as a package is becoming worse and worse value every day though, as content migrates to streaming. The kids content is all on Disney+ and Paramount+, they don’t watch linear anyway.

The problem is the price, and the steep rise that hits you in month 13 once your new customer discounts expire. Yes you can call and try and get a deal. My experience was that retentions offered me a paltry deal on my existing packages and tried to get me to drop aspects of the package I wasn’t willing to. I was offered a better deal later, via email - half price on Signature, Cinema and Sports (but still nothing off BT/Premier, the most important part of the entire package for me). By then I had already researched the alternatives and I decided to proceed with cancellation. Having to rely on player apps for the Irish channels is the worst part, of course, but the picture is fine (it’s the pre roll adverts that are most annoying). If that gets too annoying eventually Saorview is an option of course.