Sky Digital

Bloody Sky.

Our Sky+ subscription allows us to have half the movie channels, and half the sports channels. It’s quite a good compromise – allowing me to watch my beloved Tottenham Hotspur on Sky Sports 1, and allows us to watch movies on the ‘odd numbered’ Sky Movie channels. So that gave us 2 Sports channels, and 5 movie channels. It’s cheaper than taking all of the channels, and is a tiny bit more a month than having just the basic channels plus Sky+ functionality.

However, this week Sky changed all that. They’ve revamped the Movie channels – and what a hash of it they’ve made. Instead of having 10 movie channels, showing various content from the 30′s to last year’s blockbusters, they’ve altered things so that there are 8 ‘themed’ channels, showing content specific to that channel. So, ‘Sky Movies Comedy’ will buy you Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell and ‘Sky Movies Action/Thriller’ gets you Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt and so on. There are ‘Comedy’, ‘Family’, ‘Action/Thriller’, ‘Indie’, ‘Sci-Fi/Horror’, ‘Drama’, ‘Classics’ and ‘Modern Greats’. (Presumably the last channel is purely for Scorsese flicks?)

Now, this is all well and good, except for two things. Number one; I only subscribe to the ‘odd’ movie channels, so under the old line-up, I got Sky Movies 1,3,5,7 and 9. This gave me a great variety of movies to watch, and as movies are rerun on Sky Movies so often, the movie I missed on Sky Movies 2 would likely be on Sky Movies 1 in a week or two. However, under the new line up, I get Sky Movies Comedy, Family, Horror/Sci-Fi and Modern Greats! Whilst I can enjoy Toy Story or Finding Nemo, family flicks aren’t really for me, and I’m not a big horror movie person (I’m far, far to sensitive!), so two of the channels are practically worthless to me!

But the real kicker is the second problem.

Number two;

The channels formerly known as Sky Movies 1 and 2, are now Sky Movies ‘Premiere’. One channel, 1 hour timeshifted onto Sky Movies 2. This channel shows nothing but premieres, which is great, if you can overlook a couple of fundamental flaws;

a) The channel only runs from 4pm until the early hours. It’s not 24/7 like all the other movie channels, or how Sky Movies 1 and 2 *used* to be.

b) It shows the same schedule EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR A WEEK!?!

What utter, *utter* SHIT.

I’m sure Film4 tried this repeating schedule lark years ago, and it didn’t work. People got pissed off and left in droves.

To appease us poor subscribers, Sky have *cough* generously *cough* given all ‘half-and-half’ subscribers 2 months free access to all the movie channels. That’s very nice of you Sky, but worry not – I have the date pencilled in my diary to call to cancel the movie service altogether once this free trial is up!

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