Sky has announced that its Sky+ personal video recorder product has now been installed in two million homes. It follows a successful 2006 during which time the number of deployments grew by more than 50%. Sky+, a version of the NDS XTV feature set, is benefiting from the combination of a critical mass and the approaching digital switchover.
Later in 2007, Sky will introduce an on demand service using previously hidden recording capacity within more recent models. Tests for the new Sky Anytime feature got underway before Christmas. In addition to the now standard features of Record, Live Pause, and Series Link, Sky+ subscribers can now use their mobile phones to send a text message enabling recordings on their Sky+ receiver. It’s planned to extend the feature to the Internet.
New research released by Sky from its Sky View research panel shows drama to be the most popular recorded genre by Sky+ customers at 39.3%. Naturally enough live content such as news and weather accounts for just 0.6% of recordings. Other popular genres in Sky+ homes are documentaries (14.9%), entertainment (13.0%) and movies (9.5%). The three most popular channels are FX, More 4 and Hallmark. (JC)
