Holton On NXE Update Page 3

10 Aug 2009 at 18:26:51 by

But you could argue that Sony are doing the same thing with Netflix. In America, not necessarily here, but...

But that's still a paid-for experience though, that's the thing. I think you'll get to a point where you'll have your LIVE subscription and that'll give you entitlements, and obviously Gold subscription is going to give you a lot more entitlement that being a Silver subscriber, and these experiences are to give value to that Gold subscriber. I think what PlayStation are doing is different. In terms of the Sky functionality, that's a whole new world that's going to be explored by us and Sky together and is exclusive to us.

When we get more detail on how the Sky proposition will work, if you're an existing Sky subscriber versus a non-subscriber and what you might be required to do, then people will be able to see based on what they have and what they want, what they need, and whether they've got it or not. It's a little bit difficult for me to comment too much, but-

Are you thinking about opt-in opt-out service? Are you thinking about maybe a one-off payment for, say there's a football match you want to watch, just one match...

Sky Player today that exists on the PC is a one-month rolling subscription, so it's ideal for people who don't want a 12-month subscription or don't want a satellite dish, or can't have a satellite dish – they live in shared accomodation, or it's a listed building, or they just cannot get the signal that they require. Sky Player is a great alternative because it's this one-month rolling subscription for you to dip in and dip out of that content as and when you want it. Again, it's not about us trying to tell people how they want to view stuff, it's about us offering the choice. If you've got Sky at home today, there'll be ways in which you can access their content. If oyu haven't got Sky at all, then there's also ways of you being able to get the content. More will become clear as we get closer to launch and we're able to firmly nail that information and what that model looks like, but I think people are going to be pretty pleased with it.

Sky Player as a platform is a streaming service-

So you don't need any other equipment, you don't need a Sky box, you don't need any of that stuff.

Nope. So as long as you've got your Xbox 360 and your broadband connection with LIVE, then you'll be able to sign up to the service and it's all streaming content. Whether it's the live TV service or whether it's VoD, the content is delivered to you streaming.

What's the minimum connection you're going to need to be able to stream this properly?

At the moment, it's still early days in testing so as part of the announcements we would give people a guide of what that stream would be, and at the moment we're not there yet to comment on it, but you can access Sky Player on your PC today. I use it at home now and I only get two, three meg through my line, and the experience is fantastic. So it's going to be dependant on people's broadband connection and the stability of it and everything else like that as well, but essentially it's-

It's not going to be broadband heavy.

No, I can't see it being massively broadband heavy. It's not going to be like a 50 meg line or anything ridiculous like that!

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