Originally Posted by Timbionline:
“fyi - bskyb have now sold their shares in nds (who charge for encryption services)
so sky now have no reason to keep its channels ftv.”
BSkyB never owned NDS, News Corp did who also own 39% of BSkyB. Your right though that it was always done 'in the family' business-wise if that makes sense! Murdoch sold 49%'ish of NDS to a Private Equity firm some time back, now him and that Investment company have sold the lot to Cisco for an over inflated £5billion.
Sky still need NDS as Videoguard is their propitiatory CA system however if this change is permanent then they probably did take the decision that as these channels are free on Freeview then there's no point keeping them pay or FTV on Satellite, as per Sky News.
When UKTV get cosy invites to Osterley to discuss and dine with Sky management about carriage renegotiations for all their channels (whenever in the future that may be??), then when Sky's top dogs try to convince them to keep their Freeview FTA services pay on DSAT, UKTV can say "well you made yours FTA so we want to as well"......! Just being hypothetical here but Sky have set a bit of a DTT/DSAT FTA president with these. It wouldn't surprise me if we see Viva and 4Music FTA in the future, when though would be anyone's guess!