Sky Deutschland wants retailers and installers to supply new customers with only HD receivers from this summer onwards.
“With new customers, only HD-capable receivers which support DVB-S2 and H.264 should be installed,” Sky wrote in a letter to dealers and installers, reports the German Digital Fernsehen website. SD receivers should only be installed if customers explicitly do not want HDTV.
The pay-TV operator is recommending Pace and Humax receivers, but any set-top bearing the ‘Sky HD’ or ‘Premiere HD’ logo should suffice to receive the new Sky service. For now, the recommended receivers are the Humax PDR ‘iCord HD’ with a 160 GB hard disk and the ‘Sky HD 1’ from Pace (Pace DS830NP).
Customers will continue to be able to choose between buying the receiver or renting it from Sky. The operator is supplying the set-tops at no charge to its dealers and will directly charge its new customers.
