You might think that when you walk into a dealer to buy your Sky Digital system, you
walk out with a Digibox. You might think that connecting up a Digibox to your existing
satellite system would be easy, and even encouraged. But you'd be wrong on both counts,
Buying a system will take a few days and involves some very invasive security measures.
The
subsidised cost is £199 for new subscribers or £150 for existing subscribers + £25
connection fee. You will be asked to sign two contracts. ie BSkyB and British Interactive
Broadcasting (BIB) which covers the subsidy of the Digibox. Only the dealer can actually
order a card and Sky send the card back to the dealer. The dealer or installer must then
come round to your house with the box and card. You will get a dish that must be aligned
with a new satellite position and the box must be plugged into a nearby phone socket.
The card must then be authorised by using the box to phone Sky who will send an
authorisation code over the air. Once a card has been authorised in a particular receiver
it will not work in any other. This is designed to prevent cards going abroad (except with
Digiboxes in tow). Lose your card and you will have to get a new one specially issued by
Sky, there's bound to be a charge.
The BIB contract states that the box must be connected to a phone line for at least 12
months. One must think twice before establishing an uncontrollable phone link to such
dodgy media companies as Sky, especially when they have not made it clear what they intend
to use the link for. BIB is not planning any service until next year and the bulk of the
home shopping stuff will not be online for another year. I wonder why they are so keen on
demanding a connection. Any break in the phone line will soon be detected by Sky/BIB and
then BIB will disable the receiver and demand £160 return of their subsidy. I hope they
allow some leeway for those that like to minimise fire risk and disconnect equipment
overnight or whilst away from home.
If you choose not to subscribe to Sky you can still get a subsidised box. You can also
get a viewing card from the BBC for their services. Again you have to give your full name
and address in an attempt to prevent cards going abroad. Not taking up the Sky
subscriptions means that you will have to pay something like £100 for installation as
that is their contribution to the subsidy, ie free installation. You cannot avoid this
installation charge as it requires an authorised installer to register the system for
service.
Now we start getting on to the nastier side of Sky's attitude to consumer choice. If
you want to add a 2nd LNB to an existing analogue dish then you start hitting a bad
attitude from Sky. Such deviant behaviour is frowned upon by Sky and they have recommended
that installers walk away from any requests to fix up anything but the standard single
digital dish with single box. People might start enjoying the other digital services
available on Astra 1.
Sky also have a downer on those customers who would like to use a motorised system. The
card is regularly re-authorised over the and if your dish is not pointing at the right
satellite the card will be disabled. At the very least this will require the hassle of a
phone call to Sky to get the card reactivated. In fact it appears that the digibox has
been deliberately set up so that it is useless for receiving free-to-air signals from
Astra and Eutelsat. This is surely starting to verge on illegal as any one wanting
multi-satellite service must now use two dishes, which of course is not allowed.
Finally we come onto Macrovision, a neat little dongling mechanism that stops one
recording Sky programmes. With a little bit of collusion from video manufacturers the
synch pulses are messed up in such away that the video sees a pulsing brightness level
whilst the TV sees a steady picture. Early versions of Macrovision were easily fixed via a
little black box that is widely advertised in video equipment magazines but there has been
talk of an additional dongle called colorstripe that pushes the phase of the colour
information to the edge of its tolerance. This messes up a video but TV's can just about
cope. The removal of this feature requires a more expensive fix. Sky have stated that the
macrovision will only be applied to pay-per-view but there is no reason they should extend
its use in future, this facility is totally under their control. The most obvious
annoyance of this is that you lose your money if you are distracted from the programme by
a phone call. A video you could just pause and get back to.
All in all a pretty restrictive package from a company clearly trying to stifle any
opposition from other services. A gross abuse of power if you ask me and definitely not in
the public interest. Where are the laws against restrictive practice when you need them?
