KT Skylife dumps standard def
October 8, 2014
By Chris Forrester
KT Skylife, South Korea’s DTH broadcaster with more than 4 million subscribers, is to adopt an all-HD policy.
Until recently it was carrying 104 HD channels, and now says it will offer 141 “full HD” channels by the end of this year, and dropping all standard definition channels in the process.
“KT SkyLife has set up the all-HD channel platform to provide a wider range of channel selections for customers,” said Lee Nam-ki, CEO of KT SkyLife, during a media briefing in Seoul.
KT Skylife is a subsidiary of telco giant Korea Telecom, which took a majority position in the broadcaster in March 2011.
KT Skylife is also preparing for Ultra-HD. June 2nd saw it launch its first 4K channel, ‘SkyUHD’, and promised a total of 3 channels by 2015. The next pair will come on March 1st 2015.
A recent report from KDB Daewoo Securities, said: “Admittedly, it will take time for UHD broadcasting to become widely adopted, given current content supply and the digital conversion rate of pay-TV. Nevertheless, the need for UHD broadcast services is rising, fuelled by growing UHD TV sales, global sports events, and most importantly, policy support. We believe the introduction of UHD broadcasting will help facilitate industry consolidation, leaving the market controlled by only a handful of top players with the ability to secure content and deploy advanced networks.”