Sky took more than an hour on Friday to present the innovations to its Sky-Q platform to journalists – due to Corona, however, there was no classic press appointment, but a zoom broadcast from the studio in which the pay TV The broadcaster otherwise produces its Bundesliga programs. Devesh Raj, who has been CEO of Sky Deutschland since the beginning of the year and thus took over the management of the company at an unusual time, was also present. The past few months have been “a challenge to the world, society and the economy,” said Raj, emphasizing that the health of the workforce was the top priority.
But it wasn’t long before Devesh Raj got into teleshopping mode and started talking about the innovations that his house had been working on during the crisis months. The new pricing model and the revision of Sky Q are nothing less than “a new era for pay TV in Germany”, enthused the CEO. And a little later, Elke Walthelm and Christian Hindennach didn’t skimp on superlatives for their own product either. There was talk of major milestones, innovations and giant steps as well as quantum leaps, next levels and writing history.
Well, much of what Sky announced was already known. It was announced a few weeks ago that there will be four new channels, including one for documentaries and comedy. And the update of the receiver, which includes more storage capacity and more detailed information about the contents, has already been rolled out in the past few weeks. The option of using voice control has also existed for some time. However, this has now become “even smarter and more intuitive” and recently also answers the question: “What should I watch?”
Sky relies on HDR for Bundesliga
Above all, Sky promises its customers more transmissions in Ultra HD and HDR. Sky-Q customers with the Bundesliga football package and the UHD option will in future be showing 68 Bundesliga games in UHD, twice as many as before. In addition to the top game on Saturday, there should be one more game per game day in this resolution. With HDR there should be “more details, stronger colors and increased contrast” in the future. With the start of the new season, the “What did I miss?” Function will also be introduced, which allows goals, scoring chances or free kicks to be called up during the live broadcast at the push of a button. In order to keep an eye on the live image anyway, Sky relies on a picture-in-picture function. The feature should also be available for other competitions at a later date.
Users of the Sky-Q receiver can, however, expect that something will change more often in the future than before. “From now on we will bring out new updates every few months and you can expect the Sky TV experience to keep getting better,” promised Chief Commercial Officer Christian Hindennach. Elke Walthelm, Executive Vice President Content, did not have any new programs with him. However, she reaffirmed that the number of local productions is to be doubled over the next three years. The first celebrity season of “MasterChef” follows at the end of the month, followed by the horror series “Hausen” in October.
And work is already being done on replenishment: The shooting for “Me and the Others” was recently resumed and the second season of “Der Pass” is due to emerge in September. The other new series include the film adaptation of the novel “Bestattung einer Hund” and “Souls”, for which Geißendörfer Film- und Fernsehproduktion is responsible.
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