I just received a pre-season special offer from Setanta Sports in the post today, August 14th. Basically Setanta were offering the first 3 months for only €9.99.
Note the use of the past tense! This special offer expired on Thursday 13th of August, 1 day before I received the offer in the first place. Doesn’t give you much time to think it over.
ESPN and Sky have reportedly made a joint move for TV rights to show Scottish Premier League SPL games for the coming season.
Setanta Sports recently lost the SPL rights after it had defaulted on a £3 million payment to the league. The broadcaster was in the final year of its contract with the league, while it had also agreed a new four-year deal at a reported cost of £125 million.
However, a source close to the deal told The Independent that the ESPN-Sky joint bid could be up to £40 million below that figure. Despite this, it is believed that the bid will be welcome news to the smaller SPL clubs, especially as the league previously relied heavily on Setanta for its TV income.
While not commenting directly on the bid, an ESPN spokesman said: “As we continue to say, we are interested in rights where they are available and where they make business sense. But as we’ve not confirmed whether we have or have not bid, clearly we have no comment on this new speculation”.
If the deal does go through, it is unclear as yet whether ESPN will be able to make the SPL content available on other TV platforms.
Meanwhile, Sky has this week agreed to continue carriage of Setanta Ireland so that negotiations can go ahead to save the sports broadcaster in the country.
via Digital Spy.
I am in two minds. I want to get Sky HD, in fact I think I need it. Its now at the affordable price of only €49. But then there is the additional monthly subscription. I would have to ditch either or both Sky Sports and Setanta. Ditching Sky Sports would save me more money, but Setanta do not have any HD channels. Even their SD channels are quite low quality, many on boards.ie have complained of the quality of the Setanta picture. And thats not even mentioning the crass other channels that are included in the package. I am a Liverpool fan, but I think I have only watched Liverpool TV once. I think there was a Champions league qualifier on that non other broadcaster wanted. As for Arsenal, Celtic and Rangers TV I have never watched them, nor plan to either. The Golf Channel is rubbish. But Setanta have good games on a Saturday afternoon, and I am more likely to watch a Saturday game than a Sunday game.
But all that aside I am definitely leaning towards signing up to Sky HD, or Sky+HD as they call it now. So if RTÉ and TV3 added HD and +1 channels I would be sorted – at least I can tune in BBC HD and Channel 4 HD. ITV HD will remain elusive for another while – its only available on Freesat. If RTÉ etc were free to air on Satellite sky would be ditched en masse. Well I would anyway. I could quite happilly manage on the free channels and of course I would get Freesat+ HD (this would be the number 1 contender) for the main tv and freesat+ for the other telly in the Kitchen. But thats not gonna happen, mores the pity.
So I think I have talked myself into getting Sky+HD, now all I have to do is convince herself.
Or do i? 
Setanta has accused Sky of effectively preventing it from launching a high definition service on digital satellite, it was revealed by Ofcom today.
The allegation was made in a submission to the media regulator in July, when BT, Setanta, Top Up TV and Virgin Media called for a market investigation into Britain’s pay television industry.
In its submission, Setanta said: “Much of the content (particularly the US sports content) broadcast by Setanta is filmed in high definition. When Setanta starts broadcasting live FA Premier League matches in the UK from August this year, it would like to provide viewers with the option of watching that coverage in HD.”
It said that Setanta HD would need access to the satellite platform to be viable because “the satellite platform is by far the biggest pay TV platform in the UK.”