Belgacom wants television-on-demand but no firm plans for HDTV yet, despite VDSL network upgrades

Belgacom was set to introduce television-on-demand (‘Replay-TV’) towards the middle of February, thus matching the on-demand service now offered by its cable rival Telenet, which has been offering the service since the autumn. All on-demand programming will be supplied by the Flemish public broadcaster VRT initially. A Belgacom spokesman confirmed that as the service evolves the plan is to mix free-to-air content with subscription VOD type services (where customers pay a monthly subscription for access to programming), plus pay-per-view.

The company, whose Belgacom TV launched last June, currently offers a 300 movie VOD catalogue. It expanded the on-demand offer considerably after signing content deals with Dreamworks, Paramount and Warner Bros late last year. Concerts (like Robbie Williams and Bon Jovi) and children’s TV are also available on-demand.

Meanwhile, despite provision of VDSL networks offering up to 9Mbps bandwidth per home, and a long-held ambition to migrate TV services from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 Part 10 (AVC/H.264), the Belgian telco is holding off plans for an HDTV launch. The telecoms operator is convinced that its local market is not yet ready for high-definition TV and the expensive widescreen TV sets that go with it. A spokesman comments: “The market is not demanding HD at the moment because not many people have HD television sets and we just want to stress that to get Belgacom TV you don’t need to change your TV set. We don’t want to push consumers into higher expense. We can be patient because the difference between analogue television through cable TV and Belgacom TV is so noticeable that people are already happy with the improvement in quality at this stage.”