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Tag: sky

  • Sky to Launch 3D TV in 2010

    Sky has announced that it will launch the UK’s first 3D channel next year. The channel will offer a broad selection of the available 3D programming, which is expected to include movies, entertainment and sport.

    The service will be broadcast across Sky’s existing HD infrastructure and be available via the current generation of Sky+HD set-top boxes. To watch 3D, customers will also require a new ‘3D Ready’ TV, which are expected to be on sale in the UK next year.

    “3D is a genuinely ‘seeing is believing’ experience, making TV come to life as never before. Just like the launch of digital, Sky+ and HD, this is latest step in our commitment to innovating for customers,” said Brian Sullivan, Managing Director of Sky’s Customer Group.

    Sky became the first TV company in Europe that has successfully broadcasted a live event in 3D TV. On 2nd April 2009 they broadcast a performance by Keane live from Abbey Road Studios via the company’s satellite network to a Sky+HD set-top box and domestic 3D Ready TV.

    Sky has also confirmed the launch of a comprehensive ‘pull’ video-on-demand (VOD) service next year, to provide Sky+HD customers with additional choice and control to complement Sky+ and the current Sky Anytime ‘push’ VOD service. This new service will use the broadband capability of existing Sky+HD boxes.

    The jump from 2D to 3D

    TV has traditionally only been able to deliver a single image to a television screen. For all the innovation that we’ve seen in TV (including the move to colour, the migration to digital, and more recently, the launch of high definition services), all of these developments have only been able to work within the parameters of a single incoming TV feed – a 2D experience.
    So even though HD delivers an intensity and richness which results in exceptional clarity and detail, it is still based on the same underlying picture delivery mechanism as previous TV formats.

    3D TV is possible because of a series of major breakthroughs (principally in camera, post-production, encoding, set-top box and TV set technology) which means that domestic TVs are now capable of processing an image in a way that can deliver the depth information to the brain – much like the human eye – and hence add a further dimension to HD.

    For the first time, two images can now be merged and played out simultaneously on the same domestic TV display. Polarising glasses are currently used to help direct the correct left or right full colour on-screen image to the corresponding eye. The brain then processes each feed to create a single image, providing a level of depth and focus which means that the content is able to move to and from the foreground and therefore becomes three-dimensional.

  • HD Drives Freesat Sales to 100K in Five Months


    The UK’s free-to-air satellite service Freesat has racked up 100,000 sales since its launch in May.

    Freesat said high definition coverage of major sporting events over the summer played a key role in encouraging people to buy HD set-top boxes.

    Co-owned by the BBC and ITV, Freesat offers a satellite alternative to the Freeview service on digital terrestrial television.

    It is taking on competitor Sky by offering free TV channels, including some HD ones, once customers pay for a Freesat receiver.

    There are now around 120 TV and radio channels and Freesat said that its early success was greatly boosted by BBC HD and ITV HD offering free HD coverage of Euro 2008, FA football, Wimbledon and the Olympic Games.

    The service expects to have 200 channels available by the end of 2008 – including subscription-free high definition channels from the BBC and ITV- and 230 by early 2009, with around 30 channels added each month.

    Freesat is promising a packed HD Christmas schedule and November will see the launch of Freesat+, the first digital television recorder (DTR), from Humax.

    Earlier this month, ITV director of group development and strategy Carolyn Fairbairn replaced Tim Davie as chairman of the Freesat.

  • Broadcast and online TV can co-exist

    Reports suggests that VOD does not detract from broadcast TV

    Video on demand shouldn’t be viewed as a threat to broadcast TV but helps promote it, according to a report.

    Thinkbox, the marketing body for the UK’s commercial broadcasters, says that online VOD services do not detract from linear television viewing.

    It has released figures showing that the popularity of web services such as iPlayer, 4OD and Sky Player appear to be incremental to the broadcast television that people have always watched.

    The report says that both broadcast and online TV platforms are growing simultaneously, which it suggests underlines how the two fulfil different needs for viewers.

    It adds that this underlines “that they can co-exist and indeed promote each other”.

    Online TV services, according to Thinkbox, are primarily used as a means of catching up with the broadcast stream.

    Thinkbox recently announced that it has commissioned further research to examine how and why people use online TV, its relationship to broadcast TV and the advertising opportunities it affords, with preliminary results expected before the end of the year.

  • Sky now boasts 500,000 HD subscribers

    Satellite operator posts final results with revenue up and subscribers approaching 9 million

    Sky+ HD was taken by 33,000 new customers in the UK over the last three months, pushing the premium high-definition PVR to a total customer base of nearly 500,000.

    Nearly 9m people now subscribe to Sky after the company added more customers than expected over the last three months.
    Publishing results for its full financial year, Sky said it had 8.98m subscribers in total with net customer additions over the last three months coming in ahead of analyst expectations at 92,000.

    Revenue for the full year stood at £4.95m, up 9 per cent on the year before, receiving a boost from an 11 per cent uptick in retail subscription revenue to £3.77m.

    Its adjusted operating profit was £752m, down 2 per cent from the year before and attributed to continuing investment in its broadband operations.

    Jeremy Darroch, Sky CEO, said growth was still strong despite a more difficult consumer environment.
    “More customers are choosing Sky for a broader range of products and are staying with us for longer,” he said.

    The HD figure reflects take-up prior to Sky’s reduction in the Sky+ HD price from £249 to £150 effective from July 1.
    Sky noted that quarterly annualised churn has been brought down to 9.8 per cent, its lowest level since 2005.

    Average revenue per customer reached a new high of £427 on the back of continued strong take-up of its premium upsell products such as Sky+ and Sky+ HD.

    Revenue had also been improved with its push into bundle selling, with 11 per cent of its customer base now taking its “triple play” package of TV, broadband and fixed-line telephony.

  • Sky's HDTV sports coverage set to get boost

    The addition of Eurosport’s HD channel to Sky HD would mean major sporting events such as the Tour de France and Olympics broadcast in high def

    Eurosport could be returning to UK screens after a three year gap if negotiations currently being held with Sky are succesful.
    The sports network is expected to add its HD channel to the Sky HD platform within the next few days.

    It is understood to be currently testing at 28 degrees East alongside Eurosport News.
    A Eurosport spokesman said: “We’ve been negotiating with Sky and are very keen to launch our service in the UK.”

    Speaking to Broadband TV News he said that the cross promotion on Eurosport’s standard definition channels had encouraged a number of viewer enquiries.

    The channel is expected to be made available to subscribers to Sky’s HD Mix.
    Eurosport launched its high definition service on May 25, 2008 and is currently broadcasting live HD coverage of the Tour de France.

    The channel has picked up significant carriage in France, Poland, Israel, the Benelux and Scandinavia.
    After the channel’s original launch it was replaced by Eurosport 2, which was launched in 2005.
    This channel included some Eurosport News programming, but continued as a standalone operation in other markets.

    Speaking before the launch of Eurosport’s HD service in May, Laurent-Eric Le Lay, the network’s group chairman, said he wanted to provide as much high def coverage as possible.
    As well as this year’s French Open-Roland Garros tennis Grand Slam the channel’s HD offerings include the Tour de France and the Beijing Olympics.
    “Sport, especially live is spectacular in high definition; it transforms the viewing experience for sports fans,” he said.

  • HDTV to follow lead of smartphone

    In the same way that mobiles will all soon be “smartphones”, HDTV will simply become “TV”

    BY 2015 nobody will refer to “high definition” TV because HD will be the standard form of free television everywhere.
    But the HD broadcast offering in Europe will largely remain patchy during the intervening transition period, according to a report by Screen Digest.
    The study says HDTV will mainly develop as a pay TV product in Europe over the next five years – and mostly as a satellite product.

    A major factor for this is the lack of HD on free-to-air platforms, with only Sweden having already launched HD on free DTT and only France and the UK likely to follow in the short-mid-term.

    The report says that despite its name, Freesat HD has a disappointing HD line-up and is not likely to make a strong market impact in the UK.
    Other barriers to HDTV uptake are a lack of local HD channels in many countries, with pay TV operators relying mostly on US HD channels supply so far.
    The study concludes that a number of European pay TV operators “lack of ambition” when it comes to HDTV.

    In the report, HDTV 2008: Global Uptake, Strategies and Business Models, three critical success factors that will support the successful migration to HDTV are identified:
    – penetration of HD-ready displays
    – supply of HD content and HD channels
    – the availability of HD broadcast on a variety of television platforms.

    The report shows that all these are now cleared for a sustainable migration to HD in the long term.
    But it adds: “In the next five years, HDTV will mainly develop as a pay TV product in Europe, and mostly a satellite product.
    “However after analogue switch-offs are completed between 2010 and 2012, and digital free-to-air platforms are upgraded to more advanced technologies, they will end-up with more bandwidth capacity and become more widely accessible.”

    This, says the report, will kick-start the next phase of HDTV migration as HD becomes the mainstream and ultimately, the standard form of free television around the middle of next decade.

    There is a clear connection between the depth of the HD offerings and the take up of HD by subscribers, according to the study.
    It says that HD has not been pushed hard enough yet by many of Europe’s pay TV operators despite being used heavily as a marketing tool.
    The problem is that this isn’t followed through with the delivery of HD channels.
    Premiere in Germany still only offers two HD channels and its HD uptake is sluggish.
    By contrast BSkyB has now 17 HD channels covering all genres, and on the back of this has signed up almost 500,000 subscribers in less than two years – the fastest take-up of any new BSkyB product.
    The report says that in European pay TV markets that show signs of maturity, operators can use HD to drive ARPU, increase loyalty and reduce churn rates.
    HDTV can also drive pay TV acquisition, as new owners of HD-ready sets are frustrated by the lack of free HD sources.
    “Pay TV operators should therefore seize this window of opportunity before free TV eventually accommodates more HD,” says the report.

    The report also says that small and medium sized pay-TV operators might benefit from reduced costs of transmission and release bigger capacity by migrating their subscribers to MPEG4 at an early stage.

    Click here to view the report summary and its key findings

  • Soccer fans enjoy ITV's first HD programming as Euro 2008 matches broadcast on Freesat


    The UK’s ITV network has launched its HD service on Freesat by broadcasting the opening games from Euro 2008.
    Freesat is a subscription-free, digital satellite TV service from ITV and the BBC.
    Viewers can see all the games the BBC has rights to in high definition on Virgin Media and Sky, but ITV announced that its debut HD programmes would be matches on the opening few days of the football tournament.
    The first HD offering from ITV was the Portugal v Turkey match on Saturday.
    Following this, ITV’s games through to the 13th of June will also be available in high definition, by pressing the red button on ITV1 when viewing on Freesat.
    Although Euro 2008 will occupy the channel for the next few weeks, Simon Fell, Controller Emerging Technologies, ITV Consumer, said there would also be HD coverage of England football internationals, the Champions League football and selected dramas.
    Speaking at Understanding and Solutions’ Driving Digital Content event, Mr Fell said the red button strategy was made necessary by the structure of the ITV Network. “We’re a regional business funded by advertising and that’s the model we have to keep to,” he said.
    Once an HD broadcast has completed, viewers will be returned to their local ITV region.

  • Freesat's mix of HDTV programmes and subscription-free service is likely to appeal to "millions" of customers unhappy with the UK's digital TV providers


    Dissatisfaction with the UK’s top three digital TV providers is likely to make customers consider switching to freesat’s combination of HD programmes without subscription.
    That is the conclusion of Steve Weller, communications expert at uSwitch.com, which carried out a customer satisfaction study on the UK’s top three digital TV providers – who hold 95% of the market.
    Almost 9 out of 10 homes in the UK have now ‘gone digital’ and spend a total of £4.2 billion on receiving the service every year.
    However, the independent price comparison and switching service found that more than 1 in 4 customers are not satisfied with their digital service.
    While 73% of people surveyed were satisfied overall with their DTV provider, 27% said they were not satisfied. This equates to 6,000,418 households.
    Weller said the survey of nearly 10,000 digital TV subscribers looked at the services provided by Freeview, Sky and Virgin Media.
    He said that less than 1 in 2 digital TV customers (46%) are satisfied with the customer service they receive from their provider.
    “Sky and Virgin will have quite a challenge on their hands convincing customers to part with their hard earned cash whilst expecting them to accept the current levels of customer service on offer,” he said.
    “The availability of ‘free’ services has received a boost with the launch of freesat, a joint initiative from the BBC and ITV that promises high definition programmes without the need for an ongoing subscription.
    “With a one-off cost for the set-up and a box, consumers will no doubt see these services as offering greater value for money when compared to the traditional monthly subscriptions offered by Sky and Virgin.”
    On a more positive note, customers voted Sky Best Overall Provider with 76% satisfied, despite coming last for value for money (57% satisfied).
    Sky customers pay an average of £31.17 per month for their digital TV service – almost double the £16.70 paid by Virgin Media customers.
    Freeview won Best Value for Money award with 75% satisfied – with value for money voted the most important feature when choosing a DTV provider.