Amid all the controversy surrounding TVN and Discovery, another leading player in Poland’s TV industry recently embarked on far-reaching changes to its market profile.
Launched in the early 1990s by the entrepreneur Zygmunt Solorz, Polsat was initially a satellite-delivered channel before securing a national terrestrial licence. It subsequently set up a DTH platform named Cyfrowy Polsat, which after a few years was turned from a daughter into parent company, and launched numerous thematic TV channels and an SVOD service, as well as entered the telecom/mobile market. Today, Polsat is Poland’s largest media and telecom group, providing a comprehensive array of integrated services including pay-TV, telecoms, broadcasting and fixed and mobile internet.
This summer Polsat announced what amounted to a major rebrand for its services, the thinking behind which was to present customers with a more logical, modern and some have also argued neutral explanation for its offer. While the instantly recognisable and firmly established name Polsat has remained, the word Cyfrowy (‘Digital’) has disappeared, perhaps because everything is now digital. Gone, too, is the name ipla used for its on-demand platform, while the company as a whole is now known as Grupa Polsat Plus.
As a result, the latter now offers its customers Polsat Box, rather than Cyfrowy Polsat; Polsat Box Go, in place of ipla and Cyfrowy Polsat Go; and Polsat Go, a new service encompassing content from Telewizja Polsat.
At the beginning of this month, alongside Cyfrowy Polsat’s official renaming as Polsat Box, the group introduced a new 4K hybrid set-top box which allows for satellite, cable IPTV and internet OTT reception. It also launched Polsat Box Go, a VOD and streaming service containing two ad-free packages named Sport and Premium.
In another important development, Grupa Polsat Plus has also just relaunched its information and entertainment-based channel Superstacja as a news-based service named Wydarzenia 24.
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