Sky "at forefront of innovation" for 20 years

Sky's director of strategic product development Gerry O'Sullivan has said that content and technological developments over its 20 year history have secured a space for the broadcaster "at the forefront of innovation".

O'Sullivan said that Sky had focused on offering people "great choice and great quality in everything we do" and that all its product launches over the last two decades - ranging from the launch of the original analogue multichannel offering to the upcoming developments based on the Sky+ HD platform - were designed to "tick both those boxes".

"With digital, it was about getting people out of the ark with their four channels and news bulletins at a prescribed hour, and giving them news channels and movies and sports, and the type of content they want in great picture quality," he explained.

Sky Digital launched as a consumer proposition in October 1998, and a free digibox plan to migrate analogue subscribers to the new platform was launched in 1999.

O'Sullivan pointed to the 2001 launch of Sky+ as the next major milestone.

"It's difficult now to reflect back and not take for granted what life was like back then," he said. I remember the first time my wife got used to Sky+; her friends would ring her and she'd say 'hang on, I'm going to pause the telly' - they'd think she was living on a different planet. Before you ever experienced a PVR, we had tapes and videoplus codes, and that was the world we lived in. Sky+ wiped that clean."

Over half of Sky's subscriber base now takes Sky+ in the original standard definition or newer high definition variants, it was revealed last month.

The high definition platform is now the focus of Sky's platform development, as it uses the most advanced boxes in Sky's fleet in terms of processing power and broadband connectivity.

"With that HD platform, we're at the beginning at a whole new raft of innovation," said O'Sullivan. That platform is now easily affordable, you build on that with the broadband connectivity and we're looking at the new services that those two can bring."

> Click here for details on Sky's plans for Sky+ HD video on demand