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.

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.

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?

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.”

With the technology advancement now laptop sale is getting common to replace the old stock with new and advanced technology laptops. The dell laptops are not very high prices laptops but still their demand to get discounted laptops is very high. Many people second hand laptops. Similarly hp laptops are much more high priced laptops with increased technological advancement and regular innovations in the current models. Many people prefer to buy refurbished laptops and the reason behind this is their reasonable and affordable price.

The submission continued: “That platform is, however, controlled by Setanta’s principal competitor, Sky. Whilst Sky currently provides conditional access services to Setanta to enable it to distribute its standard definition channels on satellite, Sky has refused to provide conditional access services to Setanta for a new HD channel.

“It has, however, indicated that it may be willing to retail a Setanta HD sports channel on the satellite platform to its subscribers – an arrangement which would eliminate retail price competition between such a channel and Sky’s own channels (including its existing HD sports channels). Sky is, therefore, inhibiting Setanta’s ability to introduce better quality broadcasts for its viewers.”

The accusation was vigorously denied by Sky in its own submission to Ofcom. A heavily redacted section of its document, which was also released by the regulator today, said that Setanta’s allegations were “at best, mischaracterisations and, at worst highly misleading”.

It said that discussions “must be viewed as ongoing”, and that Setanta themselves characterised the negotiations as ongoing during a Competition Commission hearing on July 4. The commission’s summary of Setanta’s hearing noted: “Setanta had not yet reached agreement with Sky to make conditional access technology available to Setanta for a high definition channel. Nevertheless, Setanta was arranging for its games to be filmed using high definition compatible technology.”

Sky added: “Ofcom should question why, if Setanta believes that Sky has refused to supply and feels aggrieved at this, it did not choose to present the facts in this way to the Competition Commission, rather than as a case of continuing negotiations.

“It is particularly pertinent that Setanta gave this evidence to the Competition Commission only one day after the submission to Ofcom of the version of the Complaint of which Sky has been provided with a (partial) copy, in which Sky’s position is categorically described as a refusal to supply.”

The full submissions by Setanta and Sky are available on Ofcom’s website. The regulator said today that it “intends to publish a Consultation document” into its market investigation of the pay television market “shortly”.