[Satellite Today 08-18-08] Foxtel, the Australian pay-TV operator, is encouraged by the early results from its high-definition (HD) offering, and with the costs for HD-ready TV sets plummeting, Foxtel chose the right time to launch HD services in Australia.
“We have been watching the price of large HD-ready panels plummet,” Patrick Delany, executive director of sales and product development for Foxtel. … The “prices make them an every-man consumer device. Secondly, the amount of HD content has really exploded. There are major producers of HD content now like BBC, National Geographic and Discovery.”
    Foxtel has around 1.5 million subscribers in Australia, and the company believes 25 percent of those customers have HD-ready TV sets. “The HD disk format war ending with Blu-Ray, as well as our terrestrial competitors talking about HD, meant that Australia was primed for HD,” said Delany. “We think the potential for HD is huge. You don’t need to have an HD set right now to be a potential candidate,” he said.

An exclusive in-depth interview with Patrick Delany can be found in the August 19th issue of Satellite News. For more information about subscribing to Access Intelligence’s satellite newsletters, click here check out our Web site.