Feasibility Study of a Digital Platform for the delivery of UK ... - BFI

UK FILM COUNCIL
Sky was open to a variety of ways of working and, while it is able to digitise and ingest assets, was also perfectly open to accepting predigitised
content that may have come from a centralised source, providing standardised codecs and DRMs were in use.
From a practical point of view, the value of the content is impacted if it has had prior exposure in other TV windows or if it is made
available ‘everywhere’. However, for on-demand content in the broadband space, Sky was surprisingly open to the fairly wide distribution
of the content on other platforms and said it would ‘expect’ the content to also be made available on the service of major players like
cable, British Telecom, Homechoice, Wanadoo, AOL and Orange. Nonetheless, the greater the exclusivity, the greater support Sky would
give to the content, particularly as regards content and promotion within the broadband movie application itself.
Access costs
BSkyB recently simplified its package structure launching six mini basic tiers that can be combined in twos. The incremental cost of
movies, sports and movies plus sports declines the more basic tiers are taken. Sky subscribers receive their set-top box as part of their
subscription. Sky Plus subscribers pay towards the cost of the PVR set-top which is sold for £199 for either the 40Gbyte model or the
160Gbyte model. VoD content is sold for £2.99 a title for 24 hour rental.
BSkyB: package pricing
Basic Mixes:
Source: Screen Digest
BSkyB: Movie on-demand costs
# Basic packs Cost basic Movies Sports Movies and Sports
£ £ £ £
2 15.00 19.00 19.00 25.50
4 18.00 17.00 17.00 23.50
6 21.00 15.00 15.00 21.50
cost (£)
Films 2.99
Source: Screen Digest
Feasibility Study for a Digital Platform for the delivery of Independent UK films and Specialised films to the Home
UK Film Council © 2006
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