HDTV - what Sky said today
Here’s a quick round up of all Sky is saying about its HDTV service from the horse's mouth aka Sky's Director of Customer Products and Services, Brian Sullivan.
Reasons for the launch - Sky had originally planned to launch HD in 2008 but brought the debut forward because of the growing availability of both HD video cameras and flat screen TVs. The development of the MPEG4 video compression system also eased its bandwidth worries.
Launch date – To be announced in ‘the very near future’. We think that the hot money should be on spring 2006.
Pricing – Details to be announced in the new year. Sullivan did stress though it ‘will be affordable to the mass market from day one.’ Later in the Q and A sesh Sullivan added that there would be more than one programme package, but that Sky was very keen on keeping the pricing simple. We think that subscribers will pay an extra £10 a month over their existing Sky subscription costs for the service.
The box – It will be a Sky+ box. There are no details on the size of the hard disk, but the hot money is on 300 Gigabytes. It'll certainly have more storage than the current model which has a 160 Gigabyte hard disk. Users will be able to watch one HD channel while recording another too. The box will also feature an Ethernet connector to enable it to connect with, hazarding a guess, a Sky Easynet broadband box which will most likely launch next year. This could download HD video to the box, or be used for interactive services.
Sky’s channels – Sky Sports will feature the best of the action from Sky's four existing standard definition channels the vast majority of which will be in HD. The two movie channels will almost certainly be completely all HD, but the HD Sky One and the Artstworld channel may include some standard definition footage. Among the top HD shows for Sky One are 24, Stargate, Bones, and Over there.
Third party channels – Sullivan suggested that there will be two of these at launch. Here are a few suggestions.
World Cup – As Sullivan pointed out the BBC and ITV owns the rights to the live coverage and Sky would obviously love for one, or indeed both broadcasters to make HD football games available via free to air satellite. ‘We are prepared to give them the full depth of our technical resources,’ he quipped.
