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[The Faceless Master]

Britain has emerged as the world's biggest market for downloading pirated television, driven by tech-savvy fans who are unwilling to wait for popular U.S. shows such as "Desperate Housewives."

Britain's status as a TV downloading hot spot, revealed Thursday in a study by U.K. technology consultancy Envisional, could pose problems for U.K. broadcaster BSkyB, which is counting on high-profile U.S. shows such as "24" to draw new subscribers to its satellite TV service.

According to Envisional, Britain accounts for about one-fifth of TV downloads through file-sharing networks such as BitTorrent and eDonkey, more than any other country, followed by Australia and the United States.

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if only more people in the USA watched Enterprise...

 

[COCKLES]

It's not a problem about dates. We get SG1 / Battlestar for example before the US does now. It's cost. Perhaps if Sky had an option to just watch Sky One (where they show US drama) rather then shoehorning you into their expensive sports/bollocks packages then more people would watch on-air.*

*ah fuck it who am I kidding.

(strokes latest Alias / Lost on his Archos)

 

[Templar Wizard]

i download ALL the tv shows i watch from the internet. Finland gets most series much later than other european countries and there are usually (always) horrible finnish subtitles on the image (and the poor translation from english to finnish is VERY annoying)

if i didnt know about the shows it wouldnt be a problem, but as you north american gaffers wold discuss the latest Arrested Development Episode and i would be stuck on ep2 season 1 and the entire collection of broadcast episodes are "freely" available on the net, i just cant wait.

just like with Curb and Nova specials, i dont want to wait for 2 years for a show i want to watch.

given the technology and the speed of downloads, i can VERY EASILY have, at minimum, 2hrs of quality tv shows every night (granted i would never watch that much tv) and i am in full control of the programme choice, NO channel zapping.

i would definitely pay for a similar system which allowed me to choose what series i would have delivered to my HDD while i sleep. higher visual quality than the downloads of course.

 

[8bit]

Although I'm not in the UK, I do have one of their boxes and a subscription. However, with Arrested Development it's very difficult to keep up with the random placing of it in the BBC schedule. I'm sure it started showing on a Wednesday at 10PM, now it's on a Sunday at 11:30 or something.

 

[CloudNL]

24!!

 

[Ghost]

It's not a problem about dates. We get SG1 / Battlestar for example before the US does now. It's cost. Perhaps if Sky had an option to just watch Sky One (where they show US drama) rather then shoehorning you into their expensive sports/bollocks packages then more people would watch on-air.*

*ah fuck it who am I kidding.

(strokes latest Alias / Lost on his Archos)

Telewest do have such a package.

 

[SHOCKIE]

Telewest do have such a package.

Do you have to get/pay for a phone line with that package like Ntl?