23/05/2007 - BSkyB drops subscription for hard-drive recorder to head off rivalsBSkyB is planning to drop the monthly subscription charge for its Sky Plus hard-drive disk recorder in the hope of further boosting take-up and subscriber loyalty in the face of increased competition.
Since it launched the service, which allows viewers to pause and rewind live TV and record programmes, in October 2001 more than 2.17 million customers have signed up. The pay-TV broadcaster had already waived the £10-a-month subscription fee for those who take its premium sport or movie channels. Now it is preparing to drop the subscription for all its 8.49 million customers from July 1, although it will still charge an initial £99 to upgrade to the Sky Plus set-top box.
Sky's strategy is to increase the number of reasons for subscribers to stay with it in the face of heightened competition from Virgin Media, BT Vision and others.
Virgin, the cable rival with which Sky is engaged in a stand-off over the provision of its basic channels, recently unveiled a competitor to Sky Plus called the V+ Drive, while BT Vision also offers a similar set-top box as standard. Freeview, the subscription-free digital service, recently launched its own hard-drive recorder brand called Freeview Playback.
Sky's move will be seen as an attempt to head off the potential threat of FreeSat, a free-to-air satellite version of Freeview backed by BBC and ITV that will belatedly launch next spring.
BSkyB, which has recently seen a rise in subscriber figures and in customer turnover, also hopes to increase the number of people taking its multi-room product. It hopes that subscribers who upgrade to a Sky Plus box, which has 80GB of hard-disk space dedicated to recording and 80GB reserved for the new Sky Anytime on-demand service, will move their existing one to a different room.
The multi-room subscription, which allows viewers to watch a different satellite channel elsewhere in the house, will remain at £10 a month and is expected to become more of a promotional priority for Sky in the run-up to digital switchover. It has 1.28 million multi-room subscribers.
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01/05/2007 - Sky to launch new service on digital terrestrial television Sky today announced that it is developing plans for the launch of a subscription television service on digital terrestrial television (DTT) this summer. The new service will allow customers to receive some of Sky's most popular programmes - including sport and movies - through a conventional rooftop aerial and a DTT box for a monthly subscription.
By bringing back some of the UK's most popular pay-TV content to the DTT platform*, Sky aims to create more choice for customers who are interested in upgrading from free-to-air to pay-TV. This represents an attractive commercial opportunity, benefiting from existing investments in programming and infrastructure, and attracting new customers to Sky over and above current plans for the growth of Sky's satellite service.
The line-up of channels on the new service will offer a range of content including sports, movies, entertainment and news. The sports service will include live coverage from the Barclays Premiership and other top events. Full details, including branding, pricing and the complete channel line-up, will be revealed closer to launch.
The new service will make use of existing capacity that Sky currently uses to broadcast Sky Three, Sky News and Sky Sports News. As a result, these channels will cease to be available free-to-air via DTT in advance of the launch of the pay-TV service.
Sky plans to broadcast its pay-TV channels on DTT using the more efficient MPEG4 compression technology, bringing innovation to the platform and enabling Sky to offer four 24-hour video streams in place of the three Sky channels currently available, with further improvements expected in future. The pay-TV service will use a highly secure conditional access (CA) system similar to the one that Sky uses for its satellite television service.
To access the service, customers will buy a new set-top box that includes the relevant CA software and MPEG4 decoder. It is anticipated that once the service launches multiple manufacturers will have the opportunity to produce compatible set-top-boxes and other DTT receivers.
The launch of the new service is subject to approval by Ofcom of the necessary variations to licences held by Sky and National Grid Wireless, which provides DTT transmission and multiplexing services to Sky.
Mike Darcey, Sky's Chief Operating Officer, said:
"We look forward to bringing some of Sky's most popular content to digital terrestrial viewers. This will give families more choice and increase the availability of leading content and channel brands."
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