BBC Starts FTA from July10th

[andgarden]

Just TRY to sit through an entire Bollywood production. You may then understand US media dominance.

Originally posted by 2old4this
The solution is simple: Europeans should stop watching so much Hollywood content in the first place.


2old

 

[skyoutUK]

Originally posted by cjgall
I don't see why European citizens cannot purchase subcriptions from other countries, after all, this would increase the broadcasters and Hollywoods revenues (I assume that film companies etc receive royalties based on the number of subscribers?).

Here are my thoughts on the subject posted previously on another forum.

Pan European digital packages will never materialise there is simply too much opposition for this from nearly all governments of EU countries. Current policy is that of national gatekeepers, most countries have one platform (with exception of France) and everything outside it is simply not available (at least legally) and they want to keep it that way.

Consideration are not only political, Murdoch could hurt the government thru his media outlets and maybe more important withheld his donations to political parties and he is allowed to run what amounts to a monopoly with impunity. In other countries like France consideration is language and cultural imperialism and their ongoing battle with english invasion government would never allow package like sky to be marketed and promoted even if they provided french audio soundtrack on some programmes.

TV sans frontiers is a pipe dream, consumers would be much better off with strong competition from packages like sky and canal plus across Europe, prices would be reduced and quality would certainly go up but there is no political will to do this.

Technically receivers are very similar only difference being software that restricts them to a particular package, now even CAMs can be reprogrammed via on air download Viasat in Scandinavia plans to do exactly this in autumn when they plan to change their encryption from Viaccess to Videoguard and Premiere in Germany this August from Irdeto(Betacrypt) to Nagravision without physically changing anything! Interactive software is also very similar and also intentionally locked to a single package.

So only problem is fear on part of politicians across Europe of free market and free flow of information across national borders and loss of control of what people view.

 

[cjgall]

I don't think pan European TV has to be such a problem. Although the Dutch government are pretty strict when it comes to broadcasting, they do allow cable companies to transmit BBC1,2,Prime&World along with French, Belgian, German, Arabic and Turkish channels.

Competition on Satellite is just not going to happen over here, the population is just too small, the jam would be spread too thinly and therefore not profitable. As it is, most cable companies along with CanalDigitaal are in finacial difficulties. With the advent of Digitenne the situation can only get worse.

Practiacally all quality programming in the Netherlands is imported from the UK. This is mixed with el cheapo US crap. Quality home grown programmes are few and far between, unless you are a big brother fan...