Digital TV Europe September/October 2010
Channel focus > HD strategies
AETN’s Ice Road Truckers: AETN takes a flexible approach to HD packages.
With Scandinavia, Benelux, Poland, Latin America and the Asia-Pacific also experienc- ing an HD groundswell, it’s no surprise that channel operators other than those named above are anxious to enter the space too. Today, Discovery, National Geographic, MTV, Disney, AETN International and Eurosport, to name a few, all offer HD channels alongside their existing SD portfolios. Indeed, for some of the newer arrivals on the European pay-TV scene, there’s now a temptation to drop in an HD service first and add SD afterwards.
New lease of life
President of MGM Networks Worldwide Bruce Tuchman says his company now has six HD services in the international market. And he’s convinced it’s the way of the future: “We’ve seen from the US market that once consumers experience HD they don’t go back. The issue until now has been getting the pric-
ing and the content right, but in markets where consumers have 50-60 HD channels they’re increasingly happy to stay within that universe and not watch SD at all.” For MGM, the advent of HD has been a new lease of life: “Our classic movies look amazing in HD,” he says, “But more than that, HD has been an opportunity for us to move up the considera- tion list. By getting into the market early we
Argentina, Cablevision Mexico and Sky Mexico, Tuchman believes this deal, in a mar- ket which was historically slow to embrace pay-TV, is further evidence of the speed at which HD is bedding down.
The dial-back effect is proving particularly valuable to US channel operators, many of which have access to native HD content from their domestic market (as opposed to SD con-
“In some territories there’s a kind of technology arms race going on.”
Ed Palluth, Rainbow Media
are giving platforms what they want and creat- ing greater visibility among consumers. It’s almost like dialling back to the early years of multichannel television.” MGM’s HD deals to date have been in the US, UK, Poland, Israel, Brazil and, most recently, Spanish-speaking Latin America. Available via Cablevision
tent which has to be upconverted before it can be classified as HD). At MIPTV, for example, Scripps-owned Food Network announced plans to launch an HD version on Orbit- Showtime Network in the Middle East. Given that this launch came just a few months after the arrival of an SD version of Food Network
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