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May 05, 2010
Sky Deutschland is boosting its HDTV offering with four new channel launches as it tries to replicate in the recalcitrant German pay TV market the success of sister company Sky UK. Sky announced the launch of three new HD channels at the ANGA Cable show in Cologne, saying a fourth would follow later in the year. The new channels are: Sky Sports 2, Sky Cinema Hits and Sky Action HD, boosting the overall HD offer to 10 channels.
Going forward, the group said it was no longer interested in launching SD channels unless a simulcast HD channel was also available. Sky will also begin offering a new Sky+ dedicated HD set-top and multiroom service. Neither were previously available in the German market. The box will have a phone line and ethernet connection although neither will be enabled at launch. Developments are further indications of the influence of News Corporation on the platform as Sky Deutschland begins to replicate the service offerings of its UK namesake. The push behind HD will be a challenge in the German market, one of the least developed HD markets in Western Europe.
Sky is not the only German operator seeing the future in HDTV. Cable group KDG also said it would launch its own HD TV service and has released its a HD set-top box which it will begin selling to customers this month. The KDG Humax HD box is part of a wider strategy to boost digital uptake among KDG's subscriber base that includes launch of a new Common Interface (CI) module for digital access, meaning customers will no longer need a set-top box. In addition, Kabel BW will no longer supply standard-definition boxes and is now renting and selling only HD boxes to its subscribers as it pushes its own five-channel pay HD pack. The group said more HD channel launches where planned. Independent operator Telecolumbus is also shipping HD PVRs and zapper boxes to its end users and like the other major cable operators is negotiating its own HD channel deals to boost its pay TV offer.
The company said during a conference session at the ANGA Cable show that it believed content differentiation from the extensive German free TV offer would open the route to success in pay TV, despite a recent price increase for its packages. While Bundesliga soccer coverage remains the cornerstone of that strategy, the company now sees HD as the key secondary driver. Germany had 1.76m HD-enabled homes at the end of 2009, roughly half the number in the UK. Sky Deutschland's new HD box will be central to the service differentiation with a push video-on-demand service planned for launch later this year. Towards the end of May, the company will also launch a new Sky Anywhere service for mobile devices with access via an Apple iPad app.
Although the extensive free TV offer is generally cited as the key roadblock to development of a pay TV market in Germany, it is impossible to ignore the cultural attitudes towards television as a whole and a general reluctance to pay for TV services, regardless of the content on offer. HD has the potential to break this cycle because the availability of true HD content on German free TV remains limited. Although Sky Deutschland has some way to go before its HD offer is on a par with European peers, its new HD-only approach to channel launches should see the HD content offer expand rapidly but expectations of a rapid boost to subscriber uptake may yet be premature.
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