Sky Movies (New Zealand TV channel)
SKY Movies is a group of subscription television movie channels in New Zealand operated by SKY Network Television. The original channel, SKY Movies was launched in 1990. A sister channel, SKY Movies 2 was launched towards the end of the 1990s. This was followed by the launch of SKY Movies Greats in 2007.
SKY Movies
| Country |  New Zealand |
|---|---|
| Ownership | |
| Owner | SKY Network Television |
SKY Movies is one of SKY's movie channels in New Zealand. This channel is available on both the SKY UHF and Digital services. SKY Movies plays a schedule of movies back to back 24 hours a day. This schedule is updated each month. New movies are added weekly with the Blockbuster Premiere on Sunday nights and the Thursday Premiere on Thursday nights.
History
SKY Movies was started in 1990 when SKY Television first launched originally only playing movies during afternoons and evenings. 24 hour programming did not start until later in the nineties. Between 1993 and 1998 SKY Movies became known as HBO but later reverted back to its former name SKY Movies. NICAM stereo broadcasting was available on the UHF channel until around 1998 when SKY launched their digital service. Stereo sound is available on the Digital service. SKY Movies was renamed to SKY Movies 1 in 2004 when SKY Movies Max was renamed to SKY Movies 2 but the channel reverted back to the SKY Movies name in 2007 following the launch of SKY Movies Greats.
Widescreen broadcasting was started on the SKY Movies channel for SKY Digital subscribers as of 1 January 2005. Prior to this Widescreen broadcasting was only available on SKY Movies 2, Sky used to run movies in 4:3 format on SKY Movies and the same movies were shown again in widescreen format on SKY Movies 2.
Complaints
During 2007 many users complained due to the vast repetition of movies, as basically the same movies are replayed every day with little to no variation. This resulted in a big loss of SKY's client base with them looking more towards the internet and traditional DVD rental stores to get what they want.
SKY Movies 2
| Country | New Zealand |
|---|---|
| Ownership | |
| Owner | SKY Network Television |
SKY Movies 2 is SKY Network Television's second movie channel. SKY Movies 2 screens the same schedule as SKY Movies however 2 hours behind.
SKY Movies 2 started when SKY launched their digital service originally known as SKY Movie Max. The name was changed around 2004 to its current name. Originally SKY Movies and SKY Movies 2 ran different schedules with some movies only playing on the one channel. SKY Movies 2 has always broadcast in Widescreen with SKY Movies originally maintaining a standard 4:3 format this was to give viewers a choice of viewing a movie in widescreen or standard format. SKY Movies 2 changed their schedule in 2007 to match that of SKY Movies only shows on SKY Movies 2 are screened 2 hours later than SKY Movies.
SKY Movies Greats
| Country | New Zealand |
|---|---|
| Ownership | |
| Owner | SKY Network Television |
SKY Movies Greats is another one of SKY's movie channels in New Zealand.
SKY Movies Greats brings the best of the last decade's most memorable blockbusters to the existing movie channel lineup.