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Last year this dissatisfaction with their service and attitudes resulted in my cancelling the Sky Digital subscription I'd had ever since the service first launched.

But where else can you go if you're looking for an alternative to the free to air (FTA) channels?

Well you could buy your own satellite dish and tune in to the few remaining unencrypted satellite broadcasts that aren't part of a subscription-based service -- but that's expensive, complex and unlikely to produce a satisfactory result.

If you're lucky enough to live in an area where Telstra/Saturn have cable then you can sign up to their pay-TV option which includes good stuff that Sky doesn't have, like TechTV.

However, Telstra/Saturn seems to have simply turned to Sky to get most of its programme material now anyway.

And then there's iHug's service which I must admit I haven't seen and don't know the current state of -- perhaps readers can update me on this.

But where are the great pay channels that people in the USA get to watch?

Readers Say (updated irregularly) Nothing Yet Have Your Say

What about the Sci-Fi channel? NASA's video feed which includes great stuff whenever there's a shuttle or other mission in progress? Comedy Central?

Well TV fans, if rumours are to be believed, things may be changing at some time in the not too distant future.

If comments in the nz.comp newsgroup are to be believed, there may be plans afoot to launch a challenge to Sky TV's satellite service. Now that's good news!

That thread also raises some interesting prospect's for the Internet's involvement in such a venture.

Take for example the problems surrounding the delivery of a live NASA TV feed via satellite TV.

It seems that the NASA channel isn't beamed to this part of the world so, unlike many of the channels that Sky TV broadcast, it would not be as simple as just picking up the feed from another satellite and repackaging it for local use.

What might be possible however, is to bring in the NASA TV channel via streaming video over the Internet and then broadcast it to viewers through an uplink to a more "local" satellite.

I guess there's even the prospect of receiving non-live content over the net in highly compressed digital format for rebroadcast via satellite -- after all, millions of Net users are already swapping their favourite TV shows in the form of MPEG or Divx files.

Wouldn't it be ironic if Sky TV's first real competition came courtesy (at least in part) of the Internet -- the medium they have really failed to adequately embrace.

And wouldn't it be smart of the new operator to offer a receiver/decoder that included an integrated PVR function that would also work on FTA material?

This way they could actually *sell* the boxes rather than leasing them as Sky TV does. By selling the boxes, they'd also need less capital to get started and users would benefit from lower monthly payments and greater functionality.

What channels would *you* want to see on a pay TV service that went into competition against Sky TV and would you consider subscribing and/or buying the receiver if it had PVR capabilities?

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