I'm not a fan of the new BBC homepage either, but I never view it. I have the News and Football sections bookmarked (Football section is actually my homepage). Long as they don't touch those with their new design..
If the BBC started using adverts, a TV license would no longer be required. Therefore, it would no longer be 'owned' or funded by the public. They would no longer be legally required to have non-bias news (to an extent) and the whole current appeal of the BBC would go out the window. A hybrid adverts and lower TV license fee wouldn't work either.
I can't imagine things like Children In Need and Comic Relief doing as well as they are if the BBC was no longer funded by the public's money and stopped being a "non-profit organisation".
I've never watched the F1 via iPlayer, but I see your point about the iPlayer being flaky in that sense. As for the poor quality of bandwidth, I've never had a problem streaming, though I'm with Sky via ADSL through the phone line, as opposed to Virgin via optical. I get a constant 8-10Mb with Sky (I'm on a up to 20Mb connection but they explicitly said that I would only get 6-10Mb), and I don't get throttled during peak times. My parents are with Virgin, and their 10Mb service drops to about 1-2Mb during the evenings. From what I heard else where, Virgin's 50Mb service is pretty limited, and you'll often drop to 1Mb if everyone in your street is heavy users too, especially during peak times when Virgin will decrease your bandwidth by 75%!
I don't watch Sky News, but you have to love Sky Sports News and their football news coverage on a Saturday afternoon! I have had very few issues with Sky and have been with them for 2-3 years. Their internet a good few years ago was shoddy, but their up to 20Mb service is great. Their TV is excellent too - the HD box and remote plus GUI beats the crap out of Virgin Media. Every time I use a Virgin Media TV box, I feel like I'm no longer good with technology.
Also, check out Sky Go (ability to watch Sky channels on your iPhone, iPad, Mac, PC) - most excellent thing ever if you want to watch a football game out and about. Also, ability to remotely record on my Sky HD box via my iPhone is a life saver too. Sky's new service, Sky Anytime looks promising - especially if they can pack in the BBC's iPlayer into that package, which is being rumoured. I don't know why anyone would prefer Virgin over Sky, other than the benefit of not having to have a satellite dish.
I think the internet on Sky/VM is luck of the draw. In my area ADSL is quite simply crap. Virgin Media on the other hand is very solid. The lowest speed I've had down the line is 48Meg, and that was at peak time. I'm aware of some issues in oversubscribed areas - the same applies with ADSL but on a much bigger scale due to the slower lines.
Lets face it, ADSL will never compete with cable on any level. Cable is already capable of gigabit speeds, ADSL is barely able to get 10mbps in most places!
As a VM subscriber I've got access to Sky Go and Sky Anytime for free - its very decent. People are moving from Sky to Virgin in huge droves. Why wouldnt you? You pay less, you get more. You get the same quantity of channels, plus all the on demand stuff (sky have less than half the amount of on demand content), plus you dont have to pay £10/month for each additional box/room, and you dont pay extra for HD content. I know it probably sounds like I'm some kind of Virgin Media fanboy here, but I'm not. Like I said above, we were with Sky. We had virgin media installed last week.
We've gone from this:
- 1x standard sky box, no HD
- Sky Movies collection
- Sky Sports collection
- No on-demand content via TV at all
- Access to Sky Anytime/Sky Go on PC/iPad/XBox
- £59 /month
To this:
- 3x 'Tivo' boxes, full HD
- 1x 'VHD' box (I.e standard non-recording box), full HD
- Sky Movies collection (in HD)
- Sky Sports collection (in HD)
- Dedicated 10mbps modem in each of the TV boxes with access to youtube, iplayer, itv player, 4OD and the 5 Player
- Access to on demand HD content from WarnerTV, Comedy Central, NatGeo and others in addition to the entire SkyGo/Sky Anytime library, the Virgin On Demand library with full seasons of major TV shows
- Access to around 100 3d movies a month (not something we'd use however as we've not got a HD tv)
£48.99 /mo
You tell me - which one is better? We're not missing any channels from Sky, pay less and get a heck of a lot more content. The only thing we've lost is the ability to access Sky Go via the Xbox, but when its sitting next to a Tivo box which has access, its not really a problem.
Up until about a year ago, I would have agreed and said that Virgin TV sucked big time, but since they introduced Tivo they have really turned a corner. IMO they are now way ahead of sky. Sky's flaw is that it has to come down a dish. That's all well and good but for services like iPlayer, you simply cant use a dish, you need a decent internet connection. Thats where a dedicated 10mbps cable line directly to the box helps massively.
(Sidenote: VM 50 meg doesn't get any form of throttling, its just the 10meg one that does that)
