Sky's the limit

The future of Sky Player on Xbox 360, high definition and maybe PS3.

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Sky Player on Xbox 360 is now go. You can find out how much it'll set you back, and what channels are available, here. But we understand it's a tad confusing, which is why we cornered Griff Parry, director of On Demand at Sky, to get some much-needed clarity on all things Sky, Xbox, and Sky Player. Is it proper SD? When's Sky One coming? And what about porn? Read on for the answers to these questions and more.

VideoGamer.com: You've already released the pricing information. One thing I'm a little confused about is, you've reduced the price of multiroom from £10 to £5. Does that only apply to Sky Player on Xbox 360?

Griff Parry: This is one slightly complicated bit with the proposition to direct to home customers. If you're an existing Sky subscriber, the On Demand stuff, you're entitled to view it because you have the channel as part of your core package. Although there are some pay options, the idea there is, they're meant to be adding extra choice. The rump, the important stuff, is free. So basically the On Demand, if you're a Sky subscriber, is free. If you want to watch the live channels, well, that's a privilege of being a multiroom customer, or Broadband Unlimited. But we also give another option. If you don't want to become a proper multiroom subscriber, because you only have one bedroom and you don't have the room for the box or whatever, you can sign up to what we call Sky Player multiroom. That was previously £10 and we've dropped that to £5. If you want to watch live channels on Xbox, you can either become a multiroom subscriber proper for £10 a month; Broadband Unlimited subscriber for £10 a month; or a Sky Player multiroom subscriber for £5 a month.

VideoGamer.com: My editor has a Sky HD subscription, which he pays an extra £10 a month for. That's the same amount as multiroom or Broadband Unlimited. Why then can't he view live television through the Xbox?

GP: We've chosen not to add it as a privilege of an HD subscription. It's something we could do going forward. We just have to monitor it. We're trying to keep things as simple as possible. If I'm in a situation where I can go 'look you can get it if you're multiroom or you're Broadband Unlimited or you've got HD', all of a sudden it's quite a long story for me to tell. We're trying to keep it simple. Who knows? That's a development that may happen. Clearly what's going on is we're giving something extra to our most valued subscribers. That might be extended to HD. Let's see.

VideoGamer.com: Do you see a future when broadband speeds in this country will allow you to provide HD content?

GP: Yeah. There are two things going on. One is, broadband speeds are going to increase, and two is, the quality you can get for a given bit rate is increasing. Basically encoding technologies are improving. So I'm sure at some point in the future we will feel confident enough to talk about an HD experience in here. If you're talking about Sky and HD, people's expectations are so high. We've got to be mindful of that. We're going to wait until we can do a genuine HD experience. We're not going to compromise. So I just think it'll take a while to happen.

VideoGamer.com: Can you be more firm than "a while"?

GP: No I can't. We'll just monitor it all the time. What I can say is we're continually improving the SD quality experience we currently have.

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