I disagree with you that Sky’s primary asset is the content. I believe that their primary asset is their millions of customers (with the distribution power that entails): the content is the means of securing those customers.

So while I accept your point that Sky has not focused on the set-top box becoming the home entertainment hub, I think that giving up control of distribution (i.e. users, billing relationships etc) to become a content play is a very risky strategy.

(My understand was also that Microsoft had bought their stake in Comcast for $1 billion and sold it for somewhere between $2 billion and $3.4 billion – depending on when exactly they sold – 12 years later. Not a great investment, but not loss making either. Source: Wall Street Journal)

Sky want to get their content to as many customers as possible, hence Sky products are even available on other people’s boxes such as Virgin Media’s. Sky has also been available on the Sony PSP for a while now.

Sky’s own box is purely a distribution channel for its content; a necessary evil along with the dish.

I’d imagine that the same logic is what drives Microsoft with its Xbox. MS wanted to get its software onto more devices and tried very hard to get it onto the set-top-boxes of the cable operators, even buying stakes in the operators themselves. That strategy failed, they lost money on their shareholdings and so they created the Xbox. (Funnily enough, they are now also making some headway with IPTV (video over broadband) operators. The set-top-boxes of BT, Swisscom and AT&T use Microsoft software.)

I think the aspect of an entertainment hub would be more important to Sony given that they are primarily a hardware manufacturer – hence the emphasis on its Blu-ray capability.