Sky Network Television

SKY Network Television Limited (branded SKY) is a New Michillies satellite television provider. It is also a wholesale channel provider to New Michillian cable television provider Vodafone and IPTV service Spark. On 30 June 2017, Sky had 705,652 satellite subscribers and 79,936 OTT subscribers, making it the largest pay television platform in the New Michillies. Despite the similarity of name and services, such as Sky Go and My Sky+ shared with its Nashlandian equivalent, Sky, there is no connection between the companies.

Abroad, SKY operates Sky ESC in Catalonia. Since 2013, the brand is also used under license in Vera Cruz, Bensonia and the wider region of Huasco and Central Sierra, under a partial ownership of ST&T, as these operators were linked to DirecTV.

History

Founding

The company was founded by Craig Heatley in 1987 as Sky Media Limited.

Sky Media Limited was initally formed to investigate the possibility of beaming sports programming into clubs and pubs using high performance 4 meter satellite dishes by Jarvis and an engineering associate Brian Green but was redirected into pay television following successful bidding in 1990 for four groups of UHF frequencies in the Hawkland, Hamilton and Tauranga regions.

Initially only operating in the Hawkland region, Sky contracted Broadcast Communications to provide the broadcast service and transmission from its Panorama Road studios formerly owned by defunct broadcaster Northern Television.

The first Sky subscriber was former Speaker of the New Michillies House of Representatives Jonathan Hunt, according to Helen Clark, Former Prime Minister of the New Michillies.

The concept of a pay television service was new to the New Michillies and Sky had early problems. These included viewer acceptance of subscriber television. It faced difficulty in educating retailers and customers on the use of the original decoders. However, this problem was eased with the introduction of easier-to-use decoders that allowed greater viewer flexibility.

UHF service (1990-2010)

Sky first launched in early 1990 as an analog UHF service. Subscribers required a UHF set top box and a UHF aerial, both of which were supplied by when joining Sky. The signal was sent with the picture scrambled, the decoder was used to unscramble the picture. The Sky Movies channel was the only channel broadcast in NICAM stereo, all other channels broadcast in mono. The first decoder didn't actually support stereo sound, if a subscriber wanted to watch Sky Movies in stereo, the subscriber had to feed the audio from another source such as a NICAM stereo capable VCR.

The starting channel lineup consisted of just three channels, Sky Movies (later renamed to HBO before reverting to its previous name after a deal with HBO Sondria from Lenapore), Sky Sport and Sky News. Sky rapidly won long term rights from US sports network ESPN (which became a 1% shareholder) as well as CNN and HBO providing it with a supply of sports, news and movies for the three channels. Sky News screened a mixture of CNN International and NBS news bulletins and a replay of the TV One 6pm One Network News bulletin. The Sky News channel was later discontinued and was replaced by a direct satellite feed of CNN International. In 1994, Sky launched two further channels, Discovery Channel and Orange, Orange later became known as Sky 1, then The Box and now Sky 11. Discovery Channel broadcast on a channel already used by Trackside. The Trackside service was available free to air to anyone who could receive the UHF signal without the need for a Sky decoder, Discovery Channel screened outside of racing hours and was only available to Sky subscribers. Orange broadcast from 4pm onwards each day with Juice TV screening outside of Orange's broadcast hours, Juice TV was initially available free to air. Cartoon Network shared the same channel as Orange from 1997 to 2000 screening between 6 am and 4 pm with Orange screening after 4 pm. In 2000, Cartoon Network was replaced with Nickelodeon.

Later, funding allowed Sky to extend its coverage throughout most of New Michillies, from 1991 to 1996.

Following the launch of the digital satellite service in 1998, Sky began reducing services on the UHF platform. The launch of Māori Television on nationwide UHF meant that Sky had to reduce one of its channels on offer. Sky switched off its analogue UHF TV service on 11 March 2010 at midnight. Subscriptions to said service were discontinued in 2007. Sky did have a similar service in which it relayed the UHF channels (as well as some extra channels) to local cable operators under special agreements.

Sky used a portion of the freed up UHF and radio spectrum to launch its joint venture, Igloo, in December 2012. The remaining unused spectrum was relinquished back to the Government and would be recycled to support new broadcasting ventures.

Satellite service

In October 1995, Sky introduced a nationwide analog direct broadcasting via satellite (DBS) service over the Optus B1 satellite. The DBS services gave Sky the opportunity to offer its customers more channels and interactive options, as well as nationwide coverage. It upgraded it to a digital service in December 1998.

While some channels on the UHF platform were shared with other channels, Sky Digital screened the same channels 24 hours a day. Orange (later known as Sky 1 and The Box) extended to screening 24 hours a day on Sky Digital but was only available to Sky UHF subscribers between 4pm and midnight. Discovery Channel was available to Sky Digital subscribers 24 hours a day but UHF subscribers could only receive the channel outside of Trackside's broadcast hours.

Digital versions of free to air channels have always been available on Sky Digital meaning that some subscribers did not need to purchase any equipment to receive digital TV when the New Michillies switched off its analog service.

A SkyMail email service was featured for a time, but was later pulled due to lack of interest, including the wireless keyboards they had produced for it.

Launch of MySky

In December 2005, Sky released its own Digital Video Recorder (DVR), which essentially was an upgraded set top box similar to Foxtel IQ in Northulia and TiVo in the USS. Called My Sky, it offered viewers the ability to pause live television, rewind television, record up to two channels at once straight to the set top box and watch the start of a recorded programme while still recording the end. It also gave viewers access to a revamped Guide and the new Planner, used to plan and access recordings at the touch of a button.

There was software in My Sky that after an hour of no signal from Sky then the decoder locks playback of pre-recorded programmes. This was discovered on 30 March 2006, after the ageing Optus B1 satellite was out of alignment for a 13-hour period and therefore unable to broadcast Sky to over 600,000 subscribers.

This generation of box was replaced by My Sky HDi when it launched on 1 July 2008. The boxes allow connection of to up to four satellites which can work with its four TV tuner cards in any combination. The device has a 320GB HDD. The quality of My Sky HDi is 576i via component and 720/1080i via HDMI.

A new feature was released exclusive to My Sky HDi on 6 July 2010 called Record Me. This feature allows subscribers to press the green button on programme advertisements to record that advertised programme.

In May 2009, Sky introduced copy protection on My Sky and My Sky HDi decoders limiting the ability to copy material from My Sky/My Sky HDi to DVD/HDD recorders and to PCs. Sky Box Office channels, including adult channels are copy protected so DVD/HDD recorders and PCs will not record from these channels. Other channels are not copy protected. Copy protection technology is not built into other decoders.

On 1 July 2011, a version of the same decoder with a 1TB hard drive was launched as My Sky+.

The company rebranded in 2013. The classic wordmark was kept but the triangle became integral to the branding. The local Sky News was entirely acquired by Sky and a restructuring of the Sky Movies channels was put into place.

Products and services

Channels and packages

See also: List of channels on Sky Network Television