[Satellite TODAY 05-01-13] Freesat<\/b>, the subscription free satellite TV platform in the United Kingdom, is now in 1.7 million homes, which represents around 6 percent of U.K homes. According to the latest figures released by the company, up to the end of March this year, the platform had added about 150,000 new homes in the previous 12 months.
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\n Emma Scott, managing director, Freesat still believes there is a sizeable target market for the service to target. \u201cThere\u2019s 14 million U.K. homes with satellite dishes and we believe we offer a compelling reason to switch to Freesat,\u201d she told SatelliteTODAY.com. \u201cWe know that our customers are passionate about TV but they don\u2019t want to pay a monthly subscription to watch it. Everyone is seeking value for money, as well as a range of channels and programs that they actually want to watch.\u201d
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\n The Freesat service was launched five years ago, and since then more than 3.2 million boxes and TVs have been sold. Interestingly, and according to the operator\u2019s statistics, more than 51 percent of Freesat\u2019s customers switched from a pay-TV option in 2012\/13, the majority coming from BSkyB<\/b>. At the end of last year, BSkyB had more than 10.3 million pay-TV subscribers, making it the largest pay-TV platform in the United Kingdom.
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\n During a time of economic recession, a service such as Freesat can probably only gain in popularity. \u201cThe current recession has certainly impacted household spending, with 79 percent of viewing across all platforms, including pay, going to free channels, and 52 percent going to the top five channels; having an ongoing monthly TV subscription just doesn\u2019t make sense for most people,\u201d said Scott.
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\n Freesat launched its <free time> service last autumn, which showed the platform\u2019s pioneering approach to integrating web technologies into the TV experience. <free time> offers a smart TV guide, as well as access to on-demand programmng. The service \u201cuses open standards like HTML 5, HbbTV and OIPF. These make the barriers to entry for program providers and manufacturers far lower. And this should mean lower prices over time and more choice for consumers,\u201d Scott said. \u201cFor example, <free time> was the first British TV platform to build an HTML5 user interface; which meant that YouTube was able to integrate its HTML5 app onto Freesat first and in record time. HTML5 will encourage more channels to join Freesat in the future, lowering the bar for them to adapt or customise their existing services.\u201d
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\n In terms of where the <free time> service goes next, Scott added, \u201cFreesat will grow the <free time> features over time, including a remote record app for smart phones and tablets as well as the introduction of additional movie and music services.\u201d
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Scott is confident that Freesat will remain a key part of the digital TV market in the United Kingdom. \u201cOver half of U.K. homes don\u2019t pay to watch TV and we believe that the choice of subscription free TV should continue to exist for a very long time,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[Satellite TODAY 05-01-13] Freesat, the subscription free satellite TV platform in the United Kingdom, is now in 1.7 million homes, which represents around 6 percent of U.K homes. According to the latest figures released by the company, up to the end of March this year, the platform had added about 150,000 new homes in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81103"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}