Sky Deutschland selects Pace to provide its first HD PVR

Tuesday, May 4th, 2010
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Pace develops advanced PVR for recently-launched German and Austrian HD service

Pace plc (LSE:PIC), the leading developer of digital TV technologies for the pay TV industry, today announced that the German payTV operator, Sky Deutschland (XETRA: SKYD.DE), has chosen Pace to develop its new high definition (HD) PVR, the first product of this type to be deployed by Sky.

Pace has a highly successful existing relationship with Sky Deutschland, providing the original HD set-top box for the rollout of Sky’s new HD service in August 2009. The PVR’s built-in support for both MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 decoding gives Sky full flexibility over the management of its HD and standard definition (SD) service offering to ensure the end-user customer has the best TV viewing experience possible. The advanced HD PVR is also equipped with an Ethernet port, which future-proofs the operator’s investment.

The set-top box has a high capacity hard drive that can store up to 50 movies in SD or 25 movies of true HD content. Pace developed the device with dual tuners as standard, allowing viewers to watch one HD channel while recording another, or record two HD channels while watching HD stored content from the PVR. Sky HD receivers will be also capable of receiving future HD 3D services.

“Consumers increasingly expect to be able to view and record quality HD television, and the world’s premier operators continue to turn to Pace to enable the delivery of out their HD services,” said Neil Gaydon, CEO, Pace. “Pace leads the rest of the field in developing and delivering HD set-top box technology; we have the technological expertise and the operational excellence to support massive rollouts. We’re delighted to extend our relationship with Sky Deutschland and look forward to future collaboration as we cement the set-top box’s place at the heart of home entertainment convergence.”

Gerry Duffy, SVP Technology at Sky Deutschland said: “Pace has been a vitally important partner in supporting our roll out of new HD services; the development of the PVR is testament to how well our close collaboration has worked. Pace’s robust, innovative and user-friendly set-top boxes have proven to be a hit with our customers. Their best-in-class technology will be invaluable in retaining our customers and allowing us to scale to future requirements.”

The new PVR is designed to use minimal energy in all modes and meet the EU’s directive for power consumption. It was developed in line with Pace’s industry-leading low environmental impact (LEI) initiative, part of an ongoing ‘Design for the Environment’ framework being adopted across the entire range of new Pace products.