Russia’s NTV Plus pay-TV launches HD on Eutelsat

 

NTV-Plus announced in Moscow the launch of its new premium HD service which will be available through the W4 satellite operated by Eutelsat Communications. The HD launch follows the signatures inked in October and November 2006 between Eutelsat and Intersputnik, on behalf of NTV Plus, of new contracts for four transponders on W4.

The new capacity was secured to support the launch of new HDTV services by NTV Plus to add to its growing stable of Standard Digital channels and services.

The HDTV offer, which is the first in Russia, will further consolidate the NTV-Plus platform which assembles over 100 Russian and international digital channels. NTV-Plus today serves a subscriber base of more than 560,000 homes in Russia and the Ukraine, representing more than 1.5 million viewers.

The initial HD offer supplied by NTV-Plus will comprise three channels: HD Kino (cinema), HD Sport and HD Life. HD Kino and HD Sport are produced by NTV-Plus while HD Life is produced by the Russian company Red Media for NTV-Plus. All HD content will be broadcast using MPEG4 compression which means that subscribers to the new offer will exchange their existing decoder for a new decoder able to receive Standard Digital and HD content via an HDMI port. NTV-Plus’s objective is to capture between 10,000 and 20,000 HD subscribers by the end of 2007, taking advantage of the fast take-up in Russia of flat-screen displays, of which since 2005 the vast majority are HD-Ready.

NTV-Plus anticipates that subscribers will in particular be attracted by sports events in 2007 filmed and broadcast in HD in advance of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. The broadcaster has invested $3.5 mln in new production and broadcast equipment to support this new phase of expansion.

For Giuliano Berretta, CEO of Eutelsat: “Our relationship with NTV-Plus goes back to 2000 when Russia’s pioneering pay-TV platform was the first to broadcast from our W4 satellite. As the leader of digital pay-TV in Russia, NTV-Plus is now strengthening its commitment to innovation with the initiation of the HDTV market.”
NTV-Plus is Russia‘s first commercial pay-TV operator, broadcasting services by satellite across all of European Russia and the Ukraine. NTV-Plus went on air in 1996, when its first fully-owned analogue channel, Nashe Kino (Our Cinema) started broadcasting. By December 1997, four channels were broadcasting: Nashe Kino, Mir Kino (Cinema World), NTV-Plus Sport and Detsky Mir (Children’s World). In 1999 the company started digital broadcasts of all its channels.