We reported back in January that BSkyB (Sky) was reeling in BBC iPlayer and ITV Player to Sky Anytime+, its video-on-demand (VoD) service. At the same time, however, it also announced that this VoD offering would also be extended beyond those without Sky Broadband, opening it up to 5m more customers.
All we really knew at the time was that it would likely be rolled out some time before Easter and, well, Sky has officially announced that as of today this has now happened.
Before this roll-out, Sky Anytime+ was in 1.2m homes around the country, and it has seen weekly usage increase by 80% in the three months to 31 December 2011. The service comes with no extra charge to Sky subscribers.
Earlier this week, Sky announced it was spinning-out a new pay-as-you-go service to try and tap the 13m members of the UK public that don’t already have a paid-TV subscription package. In addition to this news today, this means Sky’s appeal will significantly rise compared to the likes of Virgin Media over the coming year.
“It’s great to be able to bring our on demand service Sky Anytime+ to even more customers, helping them to get more out of their Sky subscription,” says Luke Bradley-Jones, Director of TV Products at Sky. “We already know how popular Sky Anytime+ is and how the flexibility of the service gives customers more choice and control over how they watch an amazing range of content. We’ve seen strong demand for it to date which we hope to increase now that the service is available with any broadband provider.”
Sky customers can now access Anytime+ by connecting their Sky+ HD box to their broadband router, either with an Ethernet cable or WiFi connection.
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