HITTING A NEW HIGH
SKY Italia launches its new HDTV service

HDTV is no longer the TV of the future: it is the ‘here and now’, offering viewers razor-sharp images and crystal-clear sound. Earlier this year, SKY Italia launched its HDTV service, setting the new standard for TV broadcasting in Italy.

Europe is now in the age of High Definition Television. In western Europe in particular, steadily increasing sales of HD ready TVs are being matched by the offer of HDTV content by pay-TV platforms. In Italy, SKY Italia, the country’s leading pay-TV platform, has recently launched its SKY HD package dedicated to sports, cinema, entertainment and natural sciences.

Broadcast exclusively from Eutelsat’s HOT BIRD™ video neighbourhood at 13° East, SKY Italia has 3.9 million subscribers. To support its expansion into HDTV, the company has leased new HOT BIRD™ capacity, taking the total number of transponders currently leased to 18. SKY HD is broadcast in DVB-S2 with MPEG-4 compression, enabling up to five HDTV channels to be broadcast from a single HOT BIRD™ transponder.

SKY Italia score in Summer 2006
SKY Italia began deploying HD-capable set-top boxes in early May. The stage was then set for Italy’s first digital HD transmission, namely the UEFA Champion League’s Final, broadcast live from Paris, on 17th May. It was no coincidence that a football match should usher in SKY Italia’s new offering; merely a taster of what was to come in the summer.

The main event was the coverage of all 64 matches of the FIFA 2006 World Cup, with over 18 hours daily of live HD broadcasting from Germany and Italy. The script went as planned, with the perfect transmission rewarded with the dream outcome as the Italian team lifted the trophy in High Definition.

With Italy on a high, the SKY HD service started its regular transmissions with four new thematic channels:

SKY Sport HD showcases football, amongst other sports, with games from Italy’s Serie A, the English Premiership and the UEFA Champions League. International events, including tennis, basketball and American football are also given the HD treatment.

SKY Cinema HD presents recent film releases from around the world, as well as screen classics from the past and present, showcasing the very best of Italian and international cinema.

Next: HD is SKY Italia’s HD entertainment channel, with drama and comedy shows, music and lifestyle programming assembled from around the world.

On National Geographic Channel HD, National Geographic has embraced HD technology and now brings the minutiae of life, to life, in amazingly rich detail and colour.

The numbers game
These four new channels add to SKY Italia’s existing digital platform, which includes over 160 channels. Viewers can create their own package, combining programmes from the four main bundles: Mondo SKY, Cinema SKY, Sport SKY, and Calcio SKY.

Specific HD channels are offered as an option to the regular subscription for a monthly fee of 7 euros on top of the chosen package, and a “one-off” set-up fee of 99 euros.