BSkyB brings HDTV into focus, BBC/ITV Freesat off to promising start

Posted by Chris Wynn Monday, October 20th, 2008

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Expect BSkyB to put on some serious numbers for its high-definition television service over the next few quarters after halving the price of its HD box to £75 and embarking on a major marketing campaign for the product.

The company had 498,000 subscribers to its Sky Plus HD service at the end of June, up 33,000 in the second quarter. Sky could reasonably expect to have nearer 750,000 HD customers towards the end of the year if the company’s £10 million advertising campaign has the desired affect.Sky is really upping the ante with its HD service, which now offers 26 channels and should have 30 by the end of the year. It recently launched another six movie channels in HD – to reach nine - and revealed that in HD homes, Sky Movies’ share of viewing is 28.5 per cent higher than in standard-definition TV homes.

Sky is also giving its HDTV customers their own electronic programme guide (EPG) in the coming weeks, putting clear daylight between itself and the HD competition. And it needs to.Freesat, the free-to-air digital-satellite from the BBC and ITV, announced at the end of September that it had reached 100,000 customers, half of which were HD. This is pretty good going considering the platform launched on May 6 and initially suffered set-top box shortages.

ITV has so far resisted launching its own HD channel on Sky’s HD service, to give Freesat the advantage of being the only platform to offer both ITV and BBC HD channels. But Freesat has someway to go in HD if it is to compete with Sky’s HD lince-up.Prices of some Freesat HD are already coming down in response to the Sky offer.

Priced from about £110 (plus £80 installation if it is required), Freesat HD boxes no longer offer a cheaper alternative to Sky’s HD service – plus the Freesat receivers don’t include a hard drive. On the down side for Sky Plus HD – the £10 a month cost on top of the price of a standard subscription – could be seen a luxury too far in the tough economic climate. BT Vision and Virgin Media do not, as yet, have meaningful HD services, offering limited on-demand content rather than linear channels – but they might argue that they cannot strike deals to license Sky’s channels in HD. But with Ofcom last week confirming that HD would launch on Freeview from the end of next year on a regional basis, Sky will not have a clear run at HD for much longer.