TopTV comments on HD, PVR and VOD
After launching in South Africa just over a year ago, Top TV has already made a splash in the local pay television space.
In June this year (2011), Naspers reported that the extra competition in the space had hit their margins. In particular, the increased cost of sports programming was attributed to competition.
At the start of the year Top TV reported signing up over 200,000 subscribers and Top TV CEO Vino Govender revealed plans to launch high definition (HD) channels and offer an HD personal video recorder (PVR).
However, TopTV has now confirmed that they won’t be launching HD or PVR services in 2011. They also said that subscriber numbers are still tracking “well in excess of 200,000” but would only release official numbers at a later stage.
While MultiChoice has recently launched their BoxOffice movie rental service and SouthTel has promised to bring their VOD:TV online soon, Top TV have said that they aren’t looking at video-on-demand (VOD) at this stage.
Top TV said that the acquisition of content “is ongoing” for them, highlighting the recent launch of Steven Spielberg’s “Falling Skies” series in conjunction with Fox.
The pay TV operator said that they are estimating that they will be able to have “a more in-depth conversation” with industry, stakeholders, consumers and media in September. They did emphasise the use of the word “estimating,” however, saying that it has not been fully confirmed yet.
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