The first station from Discovery Channel has appeared in the Polish Cyfra+ package. Discovery Civilisation made its debut on May 23 following pressure from subscribers anxious to be able to view the popular documentary network. Lapsed subscribers have expressed disappointment at the number and quality of thematic channels within the Cyfra+ package.

Two Discovery Channel spin-offs are already included in the rival Wizja TV package, Discovery Channel and Animal Planet.

Cyfra+ is clearly following a similar strategy to that of terrestrial broadcaster ONdigital in the United Kingdom. Unable to sign Discovery Channel itself because of the exclusive contract held with Sky Digital, and aware of the pull of the Discovery brand, ONdigital has signed Discovery Wings and Discovery Kids. The channels are currently absent from Sky Digital, but are expected to join the package within a few weeks.

The complete suite of Discovery Channels currently available in Europe; Civilisation, Sci Trek and Travel & Adventure have been transmitted on a number of cable networks for some weeks. They are uplinked from London to the Swedish Sirius 2 satellite. Sci-Trek and Travel & Adven-ture are expected to be the next channels to join the Cyfra+ package.

The move is the latest by the French-owned company to improve its offering following the loss of three channels to the rival Eutelsat package Polsat 2 Cyfrowy. Cyfra+ has recently introduced a new service named Wishline that allows subscribers to exclusively access information on such special offers as cheap flights. The platform is to also introduce an interactive weather service, developed by the French firm NPTV, a demo version of which could be seen at Mediacast.

Cyfra+ will shortly introduce pre-paid smart cards, available from newsstands, modelled on the successful pre-paid mobile telephone concept. In Poland up to a quarter of mobile telephone packages are sold in this way. Thanks to this new marketing innovation Cyfra+ can expect to sell an additional 100,000 subscriptions before the end of the year. According to the Polish satellite magazine Sat Kurier, Cyfra+ can currently boast 370,000 subscribers, based on information from the retail trade.