German cable operator Unitymedia Kabel BW will integrate maxdome into its cable network: The more than 7 million cable customers will be able to sign up for a subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) offering from the ProSiebenSat.1 subsidiary directly at the cable company from March 2015.
maxdome will be accessible through the set-top-boxes from Unitymedia Kabel BW as well as through Horizon Go on the PC, laptop, smartphone and tablet.
With the move, Unitymedia Kabel BW takes a competitor to its own VOD service onto its cable network, but there is a difference: maxdome will offer movies, series and other content through a monthly flat-rate covering its whole lineup while the possibility to access single titles will remain possible only on the cable operator’s VOD portal.
Unitymedia Kabel BW is the first cable operator integrating maxdome into its offering. At Deutsche Telekom and its IPTV-platform Entertain, maxdome has been available since June 2014.
ProSiebenSat.1 also announced its 2014 financial results: Turnover rose by 10% to €2.88 billion. Net profit grew by 4% to €373.5 million.
An increasing number of viewers opt for paying a fee to receive ProSiebenSat.1’s ad-supported free-to-air channels in HD quality: The HD customer base rose by 25% to 5.3 million last year. The commercial TV group expects this figure to climb to up to 9 million paying HD customers by 2018.