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Why do pub TVs have a pint glass in the corner?
- kriro 11y agoGermany has this as well. Looks slightly different and I've never payed enough attention to see if it changes. Interesting how the glass is localized :) https://planetofsports.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/38917790.jpg?w=500 https://planetofsports.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/38917790....
- junto 11y agoWith prices of a monthly Sky subscription for venues ranging from 449 EUR to 1449 EUR [1], you can understand why Sky are keen to prevent the home subscription being misused. Notably, it is also not in their interests to have too many venues showing the football games. That results in less home subscribers. I often watch Champions League and Bundesliga football games in these sports bars. I see no reason for a home Sky subscription. It is a complete rip-off. [1] http://business.sky.de/sbs/cms/static/img/Einleger_Gastro_Standard_D.pdf http://business.sky.de/sbs/cms/static/img/Einleger_Gastro_St...
- adventured 11y agoThat seems incredibly expensive. In the US as a bar / restaurant you can get a $80 package from DirecTV that covers just about everything but the league owned channels.
- raverbashing 11y agoI think a lot of that pub subscription price goes to the rights owners, no?
- adventured 11y agoDISH and DirecTV, the two major US satellite operators, pay the individual content networks a cut of the subscription for rights to broadcast. So for example if your $80 package has ESPN in it, ESPN might be getting $5 of that. Whereas common networks like ABC, NBC, TBS, CBS, TNT, Fox and similar might only get $0.50. For public viewing they scale it based on occupancy. So if your bar is likely to have a viewer count of < 100 people, you'll fall into the normal tier. For a maxed out package with 2000 possible viewers, you'll pay $175, or $425 if you want all of the ESPN channels (Disney must be getting a huge cut of that +$250).
- _delirium 11y agoI wonder what keeps the American sports leagues (and/or ESPN) from charging more for public-performance licenses? I can't imagine they're doing it out of goodwill, so they must feel like they can't get UK-level fees out of bars. Maybe carrying a particular league (or even sports at all) is not as much of a "necessity" for American bars, so if they push it too much, bars will just say no thanks? In much of the UK a pub really has to have football, and usually not just any football, but the local club's games (plus "big" games).
- wodenokoto 11y agoInteresting, but a picture of said pint glass would be appropriate for such an article.
- cadab 11y agoHeres an example: http://up.metropol247.co.uk/davidlees/daybreak_sky_sports.png http://up.metropol247.co.uk/davidlees/daybreak_sky_sports.pn...
- Shorel 11y agoLooks like a cup of coffee to me. This is what I had in mind: http://factoryjoe.s3.amazonaws.com/emoticons/emoticon-0167-beer.gif http://factoryjoe.s3.amazonaws.com/emoticons/emoticon-0167-b...
- billmalarky 11y agoBut that's a mug, not a pint glass.
- minikites 11y agoI wish there was an image so I could get a sense of what it looks like.
- newaccountfool 11y agoInteresting, a lot of pubs who can afford it simply get a satellite dish and a subscription to a foreign channel. Saves them thousands a month and they get all of the important matches. Although some commentary is in a foreign language.
- jlebrech 11y agoit's legal to show a foreign language too.
- newaccountfool 11y agoYup, a publican went to court with Sky in the UK about this. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17150054 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17150054
- colinbartlett 11y agoWow "publican" is a real word, cool! As an American, I have never heard this and thought you were making it up. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/publican http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/publican
- CatsoCatsoCatso 11y agoIt's a great word but it's not one I've heard often in person, usually people just say landlord. (I live in Southern England, and this comment is only from my experience.)
- nastygibbon 11y agoThey sometimes fill them with different colours, too. Here is a link to a picture. http://goo.gl/ZDnSE0 http://goo.gl/ZDnSE0
- jmkni 11y agoI think that's just the red button indicator isn't it? If you pressed 'Back Up' on the controller, it would disappear and you would be left with the white overlay, unless I'm mistaken.
- neals 11y agoYou know what this article needs? An image!
- scrollaway 11y agoWhat's amazing/amusing to me is a hacky technical solution that solves the problem for "inspectors", instead of a solution that removes the need for any inspector to inspect the TV. A good administration system would make it easy to automatically check whether pub addresses use a business subscription.
- sopooneo 11y agoAre there pub proprietors that live over their pubs though, or beside them? If so, they could just snake the wire in from their homes.
- donatj 11y agoWell I think the idea might also be non-inspectors noticing and reporting establishments.
- Zenst 11y agoVery much so and case of being something joe-public can spot and report https://business.sky.com/fighting-fraud https://business.sky.com/fighting-fraud Now if they were to offer a token reward of even £50 then they would still be ahead as they would catch them all pretty much. Though imagine what would happen if traffic parking enforcement offered a commision to the public who reports such violations they see. Traffic wardens would be out of jobs and everybody would park much better in the long-run and many people without jobs and spare time would have a better quality of income.
- christop 11y agoThe sticker-on-screen hack seems a bit easy to detect. I've always wondered why there isn't (or maybe there is?) a black market for a wee box that takes the Sky box video output and overlays a pint glass icon in the corner. But I didn't know until this article that the pint glass volume and colour changes each day; that would make it a lot tougher. Plus I guess the pint glass isn't always shown, e.g. during adverts.
- Varcht 11y agoStartup opportunity - Capture pint glass logo from commercial feed in real time, Chroma key it, stream over internet to small overlay device, profit.
- Jugurtha 11y agoBeat me to it. In one sentence. You're another Dirac, only human.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoSky will then start to geo-code the pint glass shape and colour...
- SpaceInvader 11y agoVia satellite? Good luck...
- TeMPOraL 11y agoOh, right, I forgot about that. Disregard my comment.
- theintern 11y agoThey could though, your subscription is tied to a viewing card, which should be tied to your address. They could use firmware on the box to generate a modified pint glass based on that. It'd be a fun game of cat and mouse.
- grahamel 11y agoSky also add a number to the screen to help inspectors or to shut down streaming http://helpforum.sky.com/t5/Archived-Discussions/Strange-9-digit-number-appearing-on-screen/td-p/5559 http://helpforum.sky.com/t5/Archived-Discussions/Strange-9-d...
- mootothemax 11y agoSky also add a number to the screen to help inspectors or to shut down streaming I believe this is mostly to stop streaming. For years and years, Sky have had issues with people buying multiple subscriptions to their sports packages, connecting the receivers to a bunch of servers, and then reselling access on commercial streaming sites! The big difficulty they've then had is identifying who's behind the streaming site, and at the least, shutting down their stream. The fun part is that - judging by the number of sites that remained in operation for a good chunk of time - it does appear possible to operate an essentially anonymous business on the internet.
- christop 11y agoI wonder how this is supposed to help Sky identify who the source is — it's a satellite broadcast, so they presumably can't overlay a different number on the screen for different subscribers?
- sveiss 11y agoMultiple channels displaying different codes, targeted to different groups of receivers. Even with only two channels, I expect you could binary search it down to a single receiver over the course of a single season of matches.
- mikeash 11y agoCould you just program the receiver to overlay the numbers after receiving the unadulterated video from the satellite?
- warkid 11y agoPub tvs have beer image to manipulate viewer to buy more beer!
- EnderMB 11y agoI was talking about this to someone behind the bar once, and he also said that the reason they chose a pint glass over some other icon was that it made people more willing to buy a drink while watching the game. They'd occasionally glance at the pint glass and think "better have a pint". Not sure whether this is true or not, but it wouldn't surprise me if it had this effect. It'd be interesting if someone else had heard this, or knew whether this was true.
- madaxe_again 11y agoProbably balls, to be honest, as while priming is a very real thing, the very real pint glasses inevitably within your field of vision are probably a far greater primer than an icon of one in the corner in the screen - so if there is any effect, it'd be very marginal.
- atomicUpdate 11y agoWhy would a cable company care if you bought more beer?
- djm_ 11y agoI don't agree with the OPs reasoning but its cyclical in theory: a pub is not going to buy a Sky subscription if it does not increase their sales.
- rdudek 11y agoIs this only for satelite TV service providers or cable too? Also, is this strictly a UK thing? I have not noticed anything similar in the US but from what I can tell, all the bars I go to all have Comcast boxes. And a lot of times, you can see a rack of Comcast equipment stacked up either behind counters or right at the entrance behind the person that checks people in.
- knd775 11y agoMost likely a UK thing. There is some odd stuff there when it comes to TV and "licenses"
- klez 11y agoNot really, we have it in Italy too, but it shows a martini glass. Sorry I can't find a picture, but it looks like this one http://business.sky.it/statics/images/business/Bar/offerta_bar/abusivi/bicchierino_layer.png http://business.sky.it/statics/images/business/Bar/offerta_b...
- rmc 11y agoIreland & Germany also have (ish) TV licences
- to3m 11y agoIt's the noun, so "\"licences\"". Sky is a private business, so the arrangement here is an ordinary licencing arrangement between one business and another. If you pay £25/mo, or whatever, Sky give you the right to watch men kicking a ball about at home; if you want to show the same thing to paying customers, on the other hand, you need to be paying more. Sky pay through the nose for the rights to all this nonsense and they have to make the money back somehow. The TV "licence" (a tax, pretty much) is separate matter.
- pluma 11y agoAccording to my dictionary "license" is also used as the noun (equivalent to "licence") in American English. My dictionary may be wrong, though.
- yitchelle 11y agoStrange the Sky did not approach one of the beer factories and ask for "sponsorship"...:-)
- dorward 11y agoPubs tend to be owned by the breweries. I suspect there would be problems if Sky wanted (for example) Greene King to start advertising Fuller's in their pubs.
- glyxbaer 11y agoI don't think it would be a problem.. there's plenty of beer ads during footy...
- jaytagdamian 11y agoI always thought it was a pint of Guinness....
- dfar1 11y agoSo much knowledge in such a small post.
- yitchelle 11y agoBeer - the social lubricant.
- phkahler 11y agoOn a related note, I wonder why a lot of public places in the US have stuff on cable (not just sports) and often not HD. They could just use an antenna and get a great picture. I makes me wonder if that's not allowed because it would be a public showing - even though anyone with a portable TV could view it right there anyway. It this the case?
- joezydeco 11y agoThe NFL has poked around with this with the Superbowl broadcasts: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/01/will-your-big-screen-super-bowl-party-violate-copyright-law/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/01/will-your-big-scr...
- ams6110 11y agoBroadcast television is not licensed for commercial use.
- phkahler 11y agoIts not licensed for anything. It is a broadcast signal that anyone with a reciver can view. Any restrictions beyond that seem completely artificial and unwarranted.
- icebraining 11y agoThe law disagrees, though.
- cmdrfred 11y agoPerhaps but when people tell me something is illegal and therefore immoral I always respond with the fact that the holocaust was completely legal in germany.
- oldmanjay 11y agoSo copyright holders enforcing their rights has any equivalence at all to mass murder? I'm going to go ahead and assert that your moral compass is more or less fucked.
- zwischenzug 11y agoI worked with Sky broadcast computing staff back in the day. Apparently they had some massively expensive plan for enforcement technology. During one meeting someone said 'why not just put a glass in the corner of the streamed image to indicate it's licensed for a pub?' Job done.
- 4k 11y agoSimple solutions are often the best ones. Out of curiosity, how (if at all) was that person rewarded for saving Millions for the company?
- staticfish 11y agoHah, now you're being funny.
- jlebrech 11y agorewarded on a per month basis
- madaxe_again 11y agoProbably by getting to define the specification for it, so their outsourced successor could build it.
- kybernetyk 11y agoSky? Well, he/she probably was fired.
- guelo 11y agoI don't see how having inspectors driving from pub to pub could have saved millions.
- teekert 11y ago"and why is it sometimes full, sometimes empty and sometimes in between?"
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- CatsoCatsoCatso 11y agoYou'll probably also notice a small rectangle which appears in the top right of the screen made up of moving black and white stripes. This often indicates when an advert break is coming up, so it's pretty handy to notice if you want a head start on getting to a likely-busy pub toilet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cue_mark#Other http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cue_mark#Other
- SlashmanX 11y agoSky and most other channels don't do that anymore. I've only seen ITV use that in recent years
- jamesbrownuhh 11y agoYes, that visible cue dot is exclusively an ITV thing these days.
- e-Minguez 11y agoHere in Spain, they show a B (as in bar), but also, they randomly put a banner with some code related to the customer (pub), so if an internet stream shows the code, they know who is the customer.
- jayvanguard 11y agoI thought this article was a joke and the answer would be "because you're half passed out with your head on the table dumb-ass."
- mikeryan 11y agoHmm.... As a Smart TV app developer I see an app opportunity here...
- dghughes 11y agoI wonder if there is a pattern to the glass if it's only full, half and empty it may be simple to figure out.