CABLE CONGRESS 2008 – MADRID. Virgin Media CTO Howard Watson has defended the cablenet’s policy of transmitting just one HD channel on its network. “We don’t have the ‘never the same colour’ challenge that has driven HD offering in the US…we have 7 million HD Ready sets in the UK and I still think HD works really well for certain bits of content but is disappointing for others.”
Virgin currently transmits the linear BBC HD channel, but has placed the remainder of its HD content in its VOD library, amid suggestions that some of the 18 or so HD channels on the Sky network are at the very least bound by sweetheart deals.
“I don’t think we’re losing customers because we don’t have the HD line-up that Sky has,” Watson told the CTO panel. “It’s not causing us a churn problem, all of our HD customers are PVR, so its difficult to separate them but a part of that is HD.”
Watson said it fitted the Virgin philosophy of placing great HD content on its VOD platform.
