Sky News goes free

Sky News is now streaming its TV channel for free over its website 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Despite Rupert Murdoch's mumblings about charging for all online content, the site is free - for now at least. Murdoch said yesterday that it was time for aggregators and search engines must start paying for news content - a slight refinement on previous announcements which seemed to want to get some money out of the readers.

Back at Skynews.com a rejigged video player offers a wider choice of clips and previous shows if you're not interested in the live stream. You don't need to register or be a Sky customer but you do need to be, or at least appear to be, in the UK or the Republic of Ireland.

The player was developed in-house, we are told, and provides a higher bit-rate as well as related clips during and at the end of the clip. Top stories at the time of writing include: Man Breaks Record for Oversized Veg and Top Video:Row over Australia's Midget Cup - which seems to be about dwarf racing....

The site claims 8.5m unique, monthly visitors as well as millions of travellers at British railway stations which run the stream on billboards and half a million iPhone users who have downloaded the Sky News application. ®