Discovery’s first-ever linear Ultra HD channel has been launched today (September 18) in Russia by Media Alliance and MTS.
Known as Discovery Ultra, it is on air for 24-hours daily and is available to MTS satellite, cable and mobile TV subscribers in the basic package, as well as IPTV customers, except in Moscow and Moscow region. Around 80% of the channel’s content is produced in native HD and the plan is to increase this to 100% in the near future.
Commenting on the channel’s launch, Grigory Lavrov, general director of Media Alliance, said: “Ultra HD television is the next generation of television. Today, more and more 4K TVs are sold in Russia, while there is still very little native UHD content. We consider this niche promising and are launching our second ultra-high definition channel, following the sports Eurosport 4K. It is sports and educational and entertainment content that, in my opinion, look the most advantageous in 4K. Epic footage and inspiring video sequences have always been one of the competitive advantages of the Discovery channel, and now viewers have the opportunity to experience an even greater effect of presence.
“We are grateful to our partners from MTS, together with whom we did a great job to make this launch possible. This is another serious step in the development of our strategic cooperation”.
Alexey Ivanov, COO of MTS Media, added: “The modernisation of the TV channel plan is one of the key points of the development strategy of the TV segment of MTS. Within the framework of this direction, it becomes more and more important to expand both the genre and content content, and the image quality. Strengthening our offer with a new Ultra HD channel is a logical step along this path, and we are confident that our subscribers will appreciate the interesting content of the Discovery channel in modern TV picture quality”.
