The Czech on demand service Voyo is to widen its reach by becoming accessible via the Red Button.
Furthermore, reports Digital Rozhlas, it may start offering 4K content from next year. It adds that its appearance on HbbTV is in the final phase of testing and is available on the Nova Gold channel.
Voyo is operated by the Nova Group, one of the leading broadcasters in the Czech Republic, and will employ HbbTV 2.0, which also includes DRM, necessary for content protection.
Voyo wants to be a regional response to services such as Netflix, HBO Go (later HBO Max), Amazon Prime Video and – once launched in the near future – Disney+. Nova’s goal is to make the platform one of the three most successful players in the VOD market.
It will produce exclusive content in the form of “Voyo Originals”, complemented by acquisition titles of all genres (not only) from different parts of Europe.
Currently, Voyo offers about 2,000 titles and a total of 11,000 hours of entertainment, of which over half (60%) are watched by viewers via a TV connected to the internet.
Although Nova has not recently issued subscriber figures for Voyo, Daniel Grunt, the head of the digital division, has said the number increased by 165% in the Czech Republic in the last year. The most recent publicly released figure was 30,000.
