Magyar Telekom launches hybrid satellite TV service

Milestone reached in the TV market: Interactive Sat TV services offered by T-Home

BUDAPEST — Leader in the field of innovations, T-Home announced today that – following the first IPTV introduction in Hungary, five years ago – the company reached yet another important milestone: consequent to the technical developments implemented in the past period, starting on December 1, 2011 the company will launch a new premiere in Hungary by introducing the satellite TV services offering new, interactive services. Using the Internet connection, the interactive comfort services will also be available to customers who had no access to the T-Home IPTV service earlier.

The new proposition – which can be ordered in addition to Telekom’s Internet service – offers interactive functions, digital audio and picture quality, even HD quality channel assortment as well as electronic program guide, making the TV experience even more enjoyable.

Subscribers of the satellite TV – offering comfort features similar to IPTV – will enjoy the novel feature of being able to select from the Archive TV assortment: within 72 hours programs of channels included in the service can be viewed, or even afterwards in the subscription scheme. In addition to all these – and obviously the electronic program guide (EPG), recording, pausing, parental lock, picture in picture, search and the [origo] functions – soon the Videotheque (VoD) upgraded with the Sony Pictures feature films, as well as the popular YouTube will also be available.

Using the service – beside the appliances required for the traditional Sat TV service – necessitates a special receiver unit (Interactive Sat TV set top box) and a digital home gateway router, as well as T-Home Internet service with minimum guaranteed download speeds of 1 Mbit/sec: interactive services are operated through the normal Internet access.

T-Home customers – choosing the Basic package and committing for a 2 years loyalty period – can subscribe for the interactive TV service from December 1, 2011 for a monthly fee of only 1,900 HUF, in addition to the existing T-Home Internet and telephone subscription. Moreover, the company – as a promotional offer, on the occasion of introducing the service – installs every new Interactive Sat TV package (by making a loyalty commitment for 1 or 2 years) free of charge, and the first monthly fee is also waived. On top of that, the Premium option is also available with any new, Interactive Sat TV package for free. Every new Interactive Sat TV package ordered with 1 or 2 years loyalty includes 7 preliminarily defined films from the Videotheque, which can be viewed until January 13, 2012.

Magyar Telekom’s successful presence in the TV market is verified by the fact that the number of T-Home’s IPTV subscribers showed dynamic increase, exceeding 200 thousand by now. As commonly known, the IPTV service – radically transforming traditional television – was first launched in Hungary by T-Home (that is, T-Online Hungary, being it’s predecessor brand) in November 2006, and for a while this was the only brand offering the commercially available IPTV service.

Beside the special comfort features of the IPTV service – including pausing and rewinding TV programs, the Videotheque (VoD) offering hundreds of movie feature films even aired before the TV premiere, electronic program guide, parental lock, automatically updated exchange rate displayed on the screen, horoscope with daily, weekly or monthly forecasts, as well as the Facebook, NetWaiter and [origo] applications – the dynamic growth is also largely contributed to the fact that in June 2010 T-Home – as the first company in the world – launched the IPTV service on a cable network, using the latest EuroDocsis 3.0 technology.