UPC to Roll Out Digital TV

“Analogue cable has become old and tired, and this will reinvent video and people are going to get excited about cable television again and will change the way people view things,” said Joe Zuravle, CEO of UPC Hungary. 

With digital TV you can do funky stuff like rewind during a program; pause it and go out for a cup of coffee and come back and resume viewing; record programs that you’re browsing in the Electronic Program Guide at the touch of a button; and record up to 50 hours worth on the set top box. 

A bonus for expats and lovers of original language programs is that you get the original language of the TV program which is often English, rather than being stuck with the dubbed version. You can in effect use the TV like a DVD player.
While such functionality is also available with IPTV provided by the likes of T-Online Hungary’s T-Home TV service, UPC Hungary is ramping up its channel offering with more than 20 of them provided as part of the Digital Basic package and a further 14 new Premium channels. 

IPTV launched carrying around the same amount of channels as cable but UPC Hungary is upping the ante and taking advantage of the greater bandwidth enabled by cable. 

The new channels will include the likes of Eurosport 2, which has had the rights for Premier League soccer since UPC’s very own Sport 1 lost them pre-season; BBC Prime and several new premium channels. Also, among the new free mix UPC Hungary will be offering ultra-sharp “watch them sweat” HDTV with HD National Geographic and HD Eurosport, and Zuravle expects the Bejing Olympics to really showcase the technology. 

The digital packages will be slightly more expensive than the existing analogue packages, although the cost will include the set-top-box rental fee and users can remain with analogue should they so desire. However, UPC Hungary fully expects its TV subscribers, of which it has some 700,000, to in time embrace this much better service. Meanwhile, video on demand (VOD), which enables you to select or download the programs and watch them later, is already available with IPTV, and will be made available later this year by UPC. 

In the first round UPC Hungary will be introducing digital only for the customers subscribing to extended basic and premium packages, gradually rolling out to the entire network depending on the customer needs and the evolution of the competitive landscape. 

By the end of this year UPC expects to make 10% of its overall subscribers digital, covering four additional major cities within three months: Pécs. Szeged, Debrecen and Miskolcs. While digital might not be new, Zuravle maintains that this will be the first time that it will become available to customers in large numbers."

By Robert Smyth

Source: Budapest Business Journal