And then they would also be competing with the Spanish broadcasters (and other country broadcasters) for those rights, driving up costs.

The easiest option, should News Corp / News Int / BSkyB wish to invest in Spain would be to buy Canal+ / Digital+. AFAIK it is up for sale, and has potential buyers, but Rupert has said he is not interested.

Also, if they did buy Canal+ / Digital+ it will not mean that UK TV channels will be on that service. Just look at Sky Italia and Sky Germany as examples..it would simply be a rebranding to Sky Spain...Although many channels on satellite TV are on multiple systems - eg Discovery, Nat Geo, MTV, Disney....

Does anyone know the revenue loss for Sky should no one outside the UK receive it, is it that big for it to be a problem ?

Nobody knows for sure, but out of the 7 Billion (pounds) in bSkyb total UK revenues, it's estimated less than 2 mil is from expat subscriptions (many analysts believe it is more likely less than 1m).

so, about 1/7000th of their revenue is from expat subscriptions. I doubt they care much about it. But you can bet those who own the content they licence to Sky care where it's being broadcast.

I see, I never saw it that way.

Surely those national broadcasters in Spain, Portugfal etc who have paid millions to show expensive imported programs do care and the producers have a lot more to lose from them than those who watch UK Sky of BBC Freesat.

quite right - and something I have been raising over and over again as along with the orignal owners/makers of the programs there has been a huge financial investment

was a time when there were big bricks dropped on people who tried to release spoiler editions just ahead of the main country/region release - but you don't hear much about it any more.

If you believe the reasons for tightening the beam or the compulsory UK phone line or IP address is because the broadcasters are interested in expat business, well, fact is that UK broadcasters are obliged not to compete with broadcasters elsewhere, especially considering that their broadcasts are in original language, not overdubbed, which can be argued is competitive with broadcasters outside the UK. Especially with sports programming.

German broadcasters for example, aren't nearly restricted in their geography since all of their broadcasts are overdubbed in German (and for FTA broadcasts, original language isn't available), so it can be argued that they don't compete with broadcasters in france, spain, portugal, italy, UK or anywhere else.

F.A.O. Fred James also,

The letter has come today multiroom connection problem !

So what should I do now to prepare ?, phone Sky and ask them to remove the multiroom, will this mean they will send a new card as I will have limited time to receive it at the current address, 20-24 days tops

We did not have multi-room however before we moved out to Spain we did get the first Sky box with the compulsory 12 mth line connection. As soon as that period was up I disconnected. We then sold the house to move to Spain and moved our UK correspondence address to my sons flat. OK so far but I had to deal with the question of telephone No. What I did was to de-register my landline No online register my UK mobile No in its stead. I then spoke to Sky on that mobile and explained to them that my son has no landline he does not have Sky so all contact would be by mobile. The nice lady said that was no problem. So for 4 years living here in Spain all contact has been by mobile no problems so far.

In fact I have upgraded once to Sky+ when my older son gave me his + box and I wanted to open the recording facility so they are not that fussed about a landline these days. With the advent of 4G more people must be ditching landline and going mobile only how do they deal with that?

Also there are people who have Virgin via fibre and may not bother with a LL No but might want Sky how do they address that.

Why not ring and say you are ditching LL and going 4G but want to retain multi room see what they say?

Wait to see what happens to the Sky signal first.
You do not want to be paying for something you cannot get.
We will not have that long to wait.

Interesting I could do that, but to be honest and in the cost cutting I wish to do, personally for me I am not too fussed about the multiroom, I only watch Footie Hollyoaks and Nat Geo stuff, I am more radio than TV, but I use my sky box for Radio so ill miss that.

For the footie I want to take the AlJazeera option, if I do that it would only be the missus that wants Sky, I like the record features.

Only thing is I don't think I would be able to have 2 dishes, one for sky and one for AlJazeera ?

EMR yes some good advice, how long is a piece of string, you think it really is imminent ?

So much different opinion on that subject alone, not just in this forum

The timing seems pretty definite and I haven't seen too many people disagreeing with that.

The new satellite gets launched in 10 days time and the changes should take place about 2 months after that, subject to any more major hiccoughs like the launch vehicle blowing up!

So is there anything that maybe known in 10 days or so, or will it be when the changes you speak of take place ?

It usually takes a couple of weeks or so for the satellite to get into its final position. They then start testing and that is the first opportunity that anyone will have to see what the reception is like. There are a lot of satellite geeks out there with clever test gear and they post all the information on various forums.

That will give an indication as to whether there is any difference between the footprint of this one and the previous one.

When testing is complete which could be 6 - 8 weeks away then they will start moving channels but which ones and when are not normally published.

It is still a case of wait and see.

Just bad timing for me then

Must be quite exciting for the sat geeks though !

I have read up quite a bit on it today, thanks again.