How is Sky TV so fast ?

Lazarus

As we all know the TDF is about to begin so i thought I'd splash out, open the wallet and spend a pound to have Eurosport

Phoned them up and they said no problem , and lo and behold Eurosport was on .

So just how do they do it :?: phone line is not connected and tbh i was expecting it to take a few hours to come on not 5 seconds :shock:

Can someone explain ?

Tonymufc

MAGIC!

chiark

Sufficiently advanced technology!

(subscription updates must be included in the fairly humungous stream of data they're beaming down to all of our dishes - it's not like they're short on the bandwidth!)

mattsaw

Same with me, I upgraded a few months ago and they manged to switch it on while I was still on the phone to them. :shock:

Lazarus

TBH I thought I would have to connect the box to the phone line so they could identify my box from the many others out there !

So was really shocked that they could single out my box from the rest without it being connected via a land line.

lucasf09

Just one thing to say first, Sky aren't that magic, anyone that has a decent infrastructure (ie: Sky and Virgin in this country, BT still run on copper wires )
Secondly you are receiving ALL their channels ALL the time, the box is just told what channels to allow through. This is much easier (you give the box the info once and then forget, until customer updates), than controlling what is going where 24/7.
Hence all they do is send the box a new channel list if you will, and the box just lets one more channel though.
If you notice you can type in the channel number of channels you aren't subscribe to, all you get is a "you are not subscribed to this channel" message, if Sky where where only sending you the channels you are subscribed to the box wouldn't know the other channels exist.

petemadoc

lucasf09 wrote:

Just one thing to say first, Sky aren't that magic, anyone that has a decent infrastructure (ie: Sky and Virgin in this country, BT still run on copper wires )
Secondly you are receiving ALL their channels ALL the time, the box is just told what channels to allow through. This is much easier (you give the box the info once and then forget, until customer updates), than controlling what is going where 24/7.
Hence all they do is send the box a new channel list if you will, and the box just lets one more channel though.
If you notice you can type in the channel number of channels you aren't subscribe to, all you get is a "you are not subscribed to this channel" message, if Sky where where only sending you the channels you are subscribed to the box wouldn't know the other channels exist.

More likely to be magic IMO

corona

Tis witchcraft

nwallace

Seem to remember the old analogue system was just as quick.

Somehow they can tell the decoder what to decode based on your card.

freehub

Nah, the actual way it is done is this, see in every sky box, there is a smart hamster, this is listening to everything you say, so when you're on the phone to sky, they take your monies, and the smart hamster presses a button or something to turn that channel on.

In fact on some sky boxes, if you put your ear close enough, you'll hear the hamster on it's running machine.

Simples!

jellybellywmb

Why spend a quid when its on ITV4 ??

freehub

jellybellywmb wrote:

Why spend a quid when its on ITV4 ??

Does ITV 4 have TdF on for 6 hours?

nwallace

freehub wrote:

Nah, the actual way it is done is this, see in every sky box, there is a smart hamster, this is listening to everything you say, so when you're on the phone to sky, they take your monies, and the smart hamster presses a button or something to turn that channel on.

In fact on some sky boxes, if you put your ear close enough, you'll hear the hamster on it's running machine.

Simples!

Wondered why most boxes beak within a year or two.

mr_poll

jellybellywmb wrote:

Why spend a quid when its on ITV4 ??

Cause I prefer the Eurosport coverage and would rather give my £1 to a channel that covers the sport year round, rather than buys up cycling and then doesn't show it in preference to Minder or Poirot.

Scrumple

Poirot is controlled by images beamed from space.

richk

in a similar vein... i topped up my phone at the cashpoint a couple of weeks back. the confirmation text was received by the phone before the paper receipt came out of the machine!