HD+ Germany subs top 2m
February 13, 2017
By Chris Forrester
HD+, the soft-encrypted suite of HD channels carried by SES in Germany, has topped 2 million users at the end of last year.
As of December 31st 2016, the satellite TV offer counted some 2,111,862 subscribers, 15 per cent more than in 2015 (December 31st 2015: 1,840,800). In addition to paying customers, there are currently 850,000 households in the free HD+ test phase. In total, there are therefore currently almost three million households using HD+ says SES
Wilfried Urner, Chairman of the Management Board of HD+, said: “2016 was a great year for HD+, cracking the two million subscriber mark and growing even stronger than in the previous year. This momentum confirms that HD+ is now a real force in the German TV landscape. More and more people in Germany are willing to pay for a better television experience, whether in terms of content choice or picture quality. HD+, as one of the pioneers of HDTV, is benefiting from this trend. HD+ will be banking on further stimulus through the rising trend in Ultra-HD and the switch over of the current digital terrestrial television DVB-T to DVB-T2.”
On March 29th, the digital terrestrial network in Germany will be switched from the DVB-T transmission standard to the new DVB-T2 technology, which includes a switch to a new encoding standard (HEVC). DVB-T households will then require new hardware. For many TV households, the combination of satellite reception and HD+ therefore offers an attractive alternative: 300 programmes from all over Germany, more than 50 in HD, and 23 via satellite exclusively with HD+.