Freeview rolls out high definition for World Cup

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Ilse Howling, the managing director of Freeview, has disclosed that the roll-out of Freeview HD, which was originally set to launch in line with the switchover timetable, has been brought forward. Some 40pc of homes in Britain will have access to Freeview HD for the football tournament in South Africa next June.

She added that plans for the roll-out of the BBC's iPlayer on Freeview are also ahead of schedule, with expectations that iPlayer-enabled Freeview boxes will be available later this year. The introduction of iPlayer on Freeview comes a year earlier than the planned launch of Project Canvas, a proposed service from BT, ITV and the BBC to offer a video-on-demand and internet-enabled set-top box

Ms Howling said: "Overall Freeview is bucking the trend of the recession. People are cutting back on certain spending, but not on television. Freeview+ is up 64pc year-on-year."

The Freeview+ digital television recorder service, which was launched last autumn, has seen sales of 1.4m.

Ms Howling said that almost 14m homes have HD ready televisions and believes there is a significant appetite for Freeview HD. "Freeview HD is what people are searching for most on our website. I'm hopeful that Freeview HD will be available to 40pc of homes in Britain by the World Cup next year," she said.

Freeview customers will need to buy a new set-top box to receive the HD service. Ms Howling expects a Freeview+ HD box to cost in the region of £200.

The earlier roll-out of Freeview+HD will follow strong take-up of pay-for HD services from BSkyB and Virgin Media. HD services are also available on Freesat.

The news comes as BSkyB announced last week that it now has more than 1m Sky+HD customers. The January initiative to cut the cost of the Sky Plus HD service produced 243,000 HD customers in the three months to March 31, well ahead of City expectations. A quarter of these were completely new Sky customers.

Sky, which has 33 HD channels, reduced the price of the box to £49 earlier this year.


Source:telegraph