“Here come the UHD channels”
October 16, 2017
Chris Forrester @ MIPCOM
The MIPCOM UHD showcase in Cannes opened October 16th with a strong update from Eutelsat on the growing health of the Ultra-HD market.
Claudia Vaccarone, Eutelsat’s director/Global Market Research, said that there are now overall 99 UHD channels or services available to viewers, and using data from its own research and that of Lyngsat, said that 41 of these (up from 30 a year ago), representing 68 (52 a year ago) different feeds, were on satellite and a further 56 (30 a year ago) were on IPTV, cable and streaming services. Two channels were broadcasting terrestrially. All data is current as at the end of September.
Eutelsat is carrying 32 per cent of these channels for broadcasters such as SPI/FunBox, TravelXP 4K, Fashion One 4K, Digiturk, AT2, Insight-TV, FranSat UHD, ARTE, Rai 4K and others.
Vacaronne explained that of growing importance to UHD’s expansion were luxury 5* hotels and where the high0end hospitality industry were enthusiastic supporters of UHD. She gave as an example the French ACCOR hotel group which had set aside €225 million for technology improvements to its hotels over the next four years, and which include upgrades to its in-room TV systems.