Sky have stitched up Virgin Media customers again.
They’ve just reorganised all of their film channels. Instead of getting Sky Movies 1 to 9 and Sky Cinema 1 and 2 we now get a load of themed film channels – Sky Classics, Sky Premiere, Sky Horror, etc.
Stitch-up number one: There are fewer channels now than there were before the reorganisation.
Stitch-up number two: These new channels all seem to have shorter broadcasting hours than the old channels.
Whilst I think it’s a bit rude of Sky to effectively remove content like that without dropping prices (and rude of Virgin Media to implement those changes without even letting their customers know), I realise that Sky was spreading the decent films rather thinly across its channels and most of the films shown on the channels (particularly during the day) were complete rubbish.
So those changes were disappointing, but they weren’t what made me decide to cancel my Sky film channels subscription. No, that decision was made yesterday when I was flicking through the new channels.
Stitch-up number three: The new channels, with the single exception of Sky Family[1] are PIN-protected. You can’t watch the films on the channel without entering your PIN. Sky say that this is because these channels potentially show 15 and 18 rated films before the watershed. Which makes a kind of sense. But whilst my digital video recorder is capable of changing channels on the cable box, it can’t enter my PIN. So I can no longer set the DVR to record films when I’m not there. In fact, thinking about it, I think the films on a PIN-protected channel are broadcast in the interactive services part of the channel so it’s likely that they can’t be recorded at all. I bet that the same is true if I get a V+ box. Chances are that it’s only a Sky+ recorder that stands a chance of getting round these restrictions.
So I can no longer record films on Sky’s film channels. And 90% of my use of these channels is recording films to watch later. So the channels become almost useless to me.
I called Virgin Media this morning to remove the film channels from my subscription. This saves me almost £20 a month which can be spent in my local DVD rental shop or on a Love Film subscription.
I hope that Virgin weren’t making much on those channels and that most of the loss in income is passed directly on to Sky.
[1] And guess how keen I am to watch most of the films there
Sky+ does indeed deal okay with the PIN problem – it asks you to enter the PIN at the point you’re watching the film.When they first started this PIN melarky I phoned them up and asked them to remove it, and they told me that they couldn’t. In the end I got them to change it to 1-2-3-4 (hey, that’s the same code as my luggage!) and am putting up with it. Bah.