Digital TV News

Sky Sports News goes high-definition

Tuesday 20 July, 2010

By Becca Talbot - becca@consumerchoices.co.uk

Football fans will be able to watch Premier League highlights in HD as Sky launches a high-definition version of its popular channel, Sky Sports News.

Satellite TV giant Sky (www.sky.co.uk) will start offering the new high-definition Sky Sports News HD channel from Monday 23 August, available to all HD pack subscribers.

Sky, one of the UK’s biggest digital TV providers, will also launch a Sky Sports News dedicated iPad app.

The iPad app will also offer streaming access to Sky Sports News Radio, a new radio service which will offer rolling sports news coverage.

Sky Sports News’ executive editor, Andy Cairns, said: “At Sky Sports News we continue to push boundaries and innovate with both the journalism we offer and the quality of on-screen presentation.

“I’m delighted that through a combination of our move to HD, broader editorial coverage, and innovation on the TV, PC, iPad and mobile, we will once again raise the bar in broadcast sports news journalism.”

The standard definition version of Sky Sports News first went to air in 1998, and was the UK’s first ever dedicated sports news channel.

From 23 August, the standard definition version of the channel will only be available to Sky, Virgin Media (www.virginmedia.com) and TalkTalk TV customers, as well as online and via mobile apps.

Sky revealed last month that it would remove the channel from the Freeview service, and would be replacing it with Sky3+1, a time-shifted version of the existing Freeview channel, Sky3.