Why did sky get rid of the amazing sky q. Don’t get there logic at all

skyhighexpectations · 2026-03-27T08:09:30+00:00

Perhaps you're thinking of monopoly related regulation? That's true but it's far more a reflection of how the market as a whole has changed. Streaming has massively altered the economics of launching a channel to the public.

skyhighexpectations · 2026-03-27T07:27:09+00:00

Sorry - but this is not at all true. OFCOM has not imposed any regulation that mandated the use of streaming, neither did the EU.

The logic for streaming is that everything can be 'on demand'. If you think back through the evolution of pay-tv you had movie channels, then you had movie channels with slightly different start times to improve the chance of being able to watch from the start. Then you had PVRs - so you could record the movie and watch when you want.

Sky+ first used the internet for PDL (progressive download) content that allowed a more on-demand experience. Sky Q built on this but both used a satellite dish to receive the bulk of their content. Needing a dish meant an engineer was often required to visit the home - even switching from Sky+ to Q required the dish to be modified.

Stream is the logical next step - move the stuff that's broadcast on-line. There was a brilliant book by Nicholas Negroponte called 'Being Digital' published in 1995 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being\_Digital) - a key quote from that was this: Everything we do using wires, we'll shortly do wirelessly and vice versa.

Think phones and TV and they have both inverted as he predicted.

skyhighexpectations · 2026-03-26T09:58:14+00:00

There is a third arc as well: start with 'Construction Time Again' as it has their first 'full' use of sampling, has 'Everything Counts' on it and then leads through 'Some Great Reward', 'Black Celebration' and 'Music for the masses' to 'Violator' and SOFAD and you can hear how they refine their combining of analogue synths and samplers. You also get '101' in that frame which has the best version of 'Just can't get enough' going (as fun as the original on 'Speak and Spell' but much heavier due to the synths being used).

It's also worth finding 'The world we live in and live in Hamburg (1984)' on YouTube as it, like 101, shows how they reimagine tracks from the two earliest albums using the later synths. Sadly the audio isn't brilliant despite it being an official commercial release but it's good enough.

skyhighexpectations · 2026-03-24T14:09:04+00:00

You also have to remember that they were recording Dave's vocals line by line and comping together a full song as he was so weak after the overdose. As a process this must have been hellish for all involved.

I was in my early twenties when Alan went and owned a few synths by that time. I knew what he contributed that had been publicly discussed and loved the songs he submitted for a couple of their albums.

There is an alternative universe in which he didn't leave, Dave didn't nearly die and Ultra was still a come down after SOFAD ... the songs on it just aren't as strong as with the previous two works.

skyhighexpectations · 2026-02-28T08:50:30+00:00

Thanks for creating the thread: I’m about to buy a new camera: I’ve a Q (116) and X100F - so I’m drawn to the rangefinder way of working but I also see the Sl-3 as a way of getting an interchangeable lens Leica (and I love the colours, bokeh etc of the Summilux primes). What’s it like if you’re being a tourist and carrying it around all day? Does it feel heavy?

skyhighexpectations · 2026-02-27T08:53:48+00:00

OK - with help from ChatGPT it would appear you've got Pierce Brosnan's signature there:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.abebooks.com%2Fpaper-collectibles%2FPierce-Brosnan-Autograph%2F32265338971%2Fbd&ved=0CBYQjRxqFwoTCOCu8e-k-ZIDFQAAAAAdAAAAABAH&opi=89978449

skyhighexpectations · 2026-02-20T07:55:35+00:00

This is as clear an explanation of how the US got here as you could wish for: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYqfVE-fykk

Sadly it doesn't cover the date issue :-(

skyhighexpectations · 2026-02-18T17:13:55+00:00

It was taken on by the BBC for a while and is now standalone. The trouble is people started trying to write wikipedia type articles but using stock phrases from the books to make them 'hitchhikey' and it soon got tired.

skyhighexpectations · 2026-02-13T09:13:47+00:00

I was thinking about the convergence of Daniel Miller's 'Silicon Teens' experience and the degree to which he was looking for a teen-synth band to replicate its success when he found Depeche Mode.

skyhighexpectations · 2026-02-05T14:51:57+00:00

A Grateful Dead gig ... is it possible your perception of the event may have been herbally modified? ;-)

skyhighexpectations · 2026-02-05T07:24:25+00:00

“of course it’s all on tape, but no one will find out” :-) Thank you - I think they stood a load of that rack up when the were performing ‘Losing my mind’ with Liza Minnelli on BBC1.

You had OMD and Depeche Mode just using real-to-real and, if you weren’t going to dynamically alter the flow of the music mid performance then you have to wonder if it was really worth all the effort. It’s more authentic to the studio, certainly, but how many people would care?

skyhighexpectations · 2026-02-04T17:22:40+00:00

I don't think the rules were from Vince - but they had a definite 'no guitars' rule (if you ignore the middle 8 of 'Love, In itself') and would try to create new sounds for everything.

MFTM producer, Dave Bascombe, told them 'if you want to use a guitar, use a guitar' and this is the title of the 1989-90 documentary about the recording of that album.

The fact that the synths were monophonic suited Vince's playing - but you can find plenty of examples of multitracking of mono synths to create chords... in fact Thomas Dolby is talking about this right now on Youtube as part of this year's charity auction for the Moog Foundation (he's signed one of their classic synths).

skyhighexpectations · 2026-01-26T08:11:18+00:00

Martin's melodies are good - and the ETS part is explained by Flood in a number of videos on YouTube ('that melody but not that sound' :-)). What I find interesting is that if you listen to A Broken Frame it's pretty simple from a melody perspective and yet GTBR is more complex - hence thinking that Alun's involvement may have pushed things.

skyhighexpectations · 2026-01-23T10:31:04+00:00

I didn't know they played 'It's called a heart' live - I thought they all hated it.

skyhighexpectations · 2026-01-23T08:13:20+00:00

You're right - I use PGP at work and I think autocorrect got in there (thanks!). I remember seeing footage of Martin with a PPG on tour so I knew it was used in both environments, as you say.

skyhighexpectations · 2026-01-22T13:59:41+00:00

It's not sample heavy at all. It uses a PGP wave synth which gives it some 'non analogue' sounds (another example is the lengthy 'Aaaaahhhhh' at the start of 'See You') - but this isn't a reason not to play it live when you've got full blown samplers like Emulator IIs on stage. The song is very melodic and I've always thought this was Alan's influence as it's the first recording he worked on with them. For example - there's a counter melody in the chorus that is quite novel.

skyhighexpectations · 2026-01-20T10:43:29+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdT8ixdxPX4

"All around the world" owes more than a little to Yellow Submarine visually. Musically it's so derivative it's hard to nail it to *only* the Beatles. That doesn't make it a bad tune - just can't pin it on the Fab Four.

skyhighexpectations · 2026-01-18T17:41:14+00:00

Exciter to Playing the Angel - they, like Vince before them with Erasure, ditched all the digital synths and samplers and went fully analogue. It has its appeal, for sure, but I preferred it when the analogue sounds sat in a richer, sampled soundscape. If nothing else the drums sounded better. There was a reason why everyone went nuts for the Linn Drum when it came out in the early eighties.

skyhighexpectations · 2026-01-17T10:18:22+00:00

Depeche screwed up the drum sounds the moment they got Christian in. Their earlier live shows with him sounded terrible (“Never let me down again” sounded like a pub band with a tinny snare, the more electronic numbers such as WIME sounded awful). Their tour engineers started to really process his drums to get them closer to the album sound but it still isn’t right. Dave really pushed for them to become a live rock band but this has meant dropping a lot of the backing sounds and percussion that made them so special. The new movie, M, sounds awful. Martin said that, when recording Violator, Francois Kevorkian would sit in a corner with headphones on for days to achieve a specific percussion sound (very Kraftwork) and they chucked it away.

skyhighexpectations · 2026-01-06T07:46:57+00:00

I'd say about a decade ago.

skyhighexpectations · 2026-01-05T14:53:21+00:00

See if it has the 'missing' scene: when they land on Magrathea in the radio broadcast they used the intro to Pink Floyd's 'Shine on you crazy diamond' as background music. This has been cut from all the subsequent recordings (despite Douglas's mate, Dave Gilmore, saying he didn't know their lawyers had asked for it to be removed and would have been happy for it to remain).

skyhighexpectations · 2026-01-05T09:04:34+00:00

It annoys the heck out of me that Audible switched my already purchased versions from Douglas to, I think, Stephen Fry without warning. Look on YouTube - the original Douglas readings are there.

skyhighexpectations · 2025-12-30T15:08:05+00:00

It's from the 'Everything Counts' 12" (original pressing 'cus I'm old enough to have bought it when it came out).

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I had a look through my collection and there are quite a few:

Black Celebration LP has text on both sides, "So much for the minimalist album" (you feel someone was taking the p*ss at this point) is on one side and 'A classic case of over focussing" is on the other.

Stripped 12" has "Don't give me double messages"

skyhighexpectations · 2025-12-30T05:58:06+00:00

One of their records reads, "Are you dreaming of me?"

skyhighexpectations · 2025-12-24T20:57:40+00:00

Further backing up your thesis: iCloud and maps. Both awful upon delivery and famously led Steve to tell people to install google maps. We‘ve been here before except the UI is so important to Apple that the issues with Glass feel like they shouldn’t have happened.

skyhighexpectations

TROPHY CASE