profile see sky plc. sky uk limited type pay tv broadband and phone country united kingdom availability satellite founded 2 november 1990 ; 25 years ago 1990 11 02 slogan believe in better headquarters isleworth broadcast area united kingdom parent sky plc key people stephen van rooyen ceo former names british sky broadcasting limited official website www.sky.com sky uk limited formerly british sky broadcasting and bskyb is a telecommunications company which serves the united kingdom . sky provides television and broadband internet services and fixed line telephone services to consumers and businesses in the united kingdom . it is the uk s largest pay tv broadcaster with 11 million customers as of 2015 . 1 it was the uk s most popular digital tv service until it was overtaken by freeview in april 2007 . 2 its corporate headquarters are based in isleworth . 3 formed in november 1990 by the equal merger of sky television and british satellite broadcasting bskyb became the uk s largest digital subscription television company . following bskyb s 2014 acquisition of sky italia and a majority 90.04 % interest in sky deutschland in november 2014 its holding company british sky broadcasting group plc changed its name to sky plc. 4 the united kingdom operations also changed the company name from british sky broadcasting limited to sky uk limited still trading as sky . sky uk limited is a wholly owned subsidiary of sky plc with its current company directors being andrew griffith and christopher taylor . 5 griffith acts as the chief financial officer cfo and the managing director for the commercial businesses division . 6 contents 1 history 1.1 origins 1.2 premier league football 1.3 sky multichannels 1.4 launch of sky digital 1.5 2010s 2 services 2.1 digital terrestrial television 2.2 video on demand 2.3 game consoles 2.4 broadband 3 products 3.1 digibox 3.2 personal video recorder 3.3 high definition 3.4 3d 3.5 sky q and uhd 4 television channels 5 marketing 6 broadcasting 6.1 transmission 6.2 low noise block converter 6.3 standard definition broadcasts 6.4 digital satellite receivers 6.5 electronic programme guide 6.5.1 technology 6.5.2 numbering system 7 competition 8 virgin media dispute 9 litigation 10 criticism and controversies 11 see also 12 references 13 external links history edit origins edit the present service can trace its heritage back to 1989 when bskyb s predecessors sky television plc and british satellite broadcasting encrypted their respective film channels sky movies and the movie channel which required viewers to get decoding equipment and a subscription to watch the channels . after the two companies merged subscribers could get access to both channels and later the sports channel sky sports also became encrypted . premier league football edit main article sky sports in the autumn of 1991 talks were held for the broadcast rights for premier league for a five year period from the 1992 season . 7 itv were the current rights holders and fought hard to retain the new rights . itv had increased its offer from 18m to 34m per year to keep control of the rights . 8 bskyb joined forces with the bbc 9 to make a counter bid . the bbc was given the highlights of most of the matches while bskyb paying 304m for the premier league rights would give them a monopoly of all live matches up to 60 per year from the 1992 season . 10 murdoch described sport as a battering ram for pay television providing a strong customer base . 11 a few weeks after the deal itv went to the high court to get an injunction as it believed their bid details had been leaked before the decision was taken . itv also asked the office of fair trading to investigate since it believed rupert murdoch s media empire via its newspapers had influenced the deal . 12 a few days later neither action took effect itv believed bskyb was telephoned and informed of its 262m bid and premier league advised bskyb to increase its counter bid . 13 bskyb retained the rights paying 670m 1997 2001 deal but was challenged by on digital 14 for the rights from 2001 2004 thus were forced to 1.1 billion which gave them 66 live games a year . 15 following a lengthy legal battle with the european commission which deemed the exclusivity of the rights to be against the interests of competition and the consumer bskyb s monopoly came to an end from the 2007 08 season . in may 2006 the irish broadcaster setanta sports was awarded two of the six premier league packages that the english fa offered to broadcasters . sky picked up the remaining four for 1.3 bn . 16 in february 2015 sky bid 4.2 bn for a package of 120 premier league games across the three seasons from 2016 . this represented an increase of 70 % on the previous contract and was said to be 1bn more than the company had expected to pay . the move has been followed by staff cuts increased subscription prices including 9 % in sky s family package and the dropping of the 3d channel . sky multichannels edit main article sky multichannels in september 1993 bskyb launched sky multichannels which was the present digital platform s analogue predecessor . sky multichannels was a subscription package that gave access not only to sky s own channels but also those of third party broadcasters . the service started on 1 september 1993 17 based on the idea from the then chief executive officer sam chisholm and rupert murdoch of converting the company business strategy to an entirely fee based concept . the new package included four channels formerly available free to air broadcasting on astra s satellites as well as introducing new channels . 18 the service continued until the closure of bskyb s analogue service on 27 september 2001 19 due to the launch and expansion of the sky digital platform . some of the channels did broadcast either in the clear or soft encrypted whereby a videocrypt decoder was required to decode without a subscription card prior to their addition to the sky multichannels package . 20 21 within two months of the launch bskyb gained 400 000 new subscribers with the majority taking at least one premium channel as well 22 which helped bskyb reach 3.5 million households by mid 1994 . michael grade criticised the operations in front of the select committee on national heritage mainly for the lack of original programming on many of the new channels . 23 launch of sky digital edit bskyb s digital service was officially launched on 1 october 1998 under the name sky digital although small scale tests were carried out before then . at this time the use of the sky digital brand made an important distinction between the new service and sky s analogue services . key selling points were the improvement in picture and sound quality increased number of channels and an interactive service branded open ... . now called sky active bskyb competed with the ondigital later itv digital terrestrial offering and cable services . within 30 days over 100 000 digiboxes had been sold which help bolstered bskyb s decision to give away free digiboxes and minidishes from may 1999 . in addition to most channels from the sky multichannels package sky digital launched with several new channels that were exclusive to the digital offer . the switch over from analogue to digital proceeded relatively quickly . in q3 1998 there were 6 million multichannel tv homes in the uk i.e. homes that watch television other than the traditional analogue terrestrial and over half of these homes watched television using bskyb s analogue service . bskyb s digital service surpassed the analogue service in terms of subscribers in late 1999 . 24 by june 2000 the service had 3.6 million subscribers which gave bskyb 8.988 million subscribers across all platforms . this substantial growth reflected bskyb s 34 % share of viewers in multi channel homes up from 13.4 % from 1999 . 25 bskyb s analogue service ended in october 2001 and the digital service would eventually be marketed as just sky . by june 2005 the number of digital subscribers increase to 7.8 m while it produced 38 375 hours of sport in 2005 26 2010s edit bskyb s direct to home satellite service became available in 10 million homes in 2010 europe s first pay tv platform in to achieve that milestone . confirming it had reached its target the broadcaster said its reach into 36 % of households in the uk represented an audience of more than 25m people . the target was first announced in august 2004 since then an additional 2.4 m customers had subscribed to bskyb s direct to home service . media commentators had debated whether the figure could be reached as the growth in subscriber numbers elsewhere in europe flattened . 27 the daily mail newspaper reported in 2012 that the uk government s benefits agency was checking claimants sky tv bills to establish if a woman in receipt of benefits as a single mother is wrongly claiming to be living alone as it claimed subscription to sports channels would betray a man s presence in the household . 28 in december the uk s parliament heard a claim that a subscription to bskyb was often damaging along with alcohol tobacco and gambling . conservative mp alec shelbrooke was proposing the payments of benefits and tax credits on a welfare cash card in the style of the supplemental nutrition assistance program that could be used to buy only essentials . 29 services edit digital terrestrial television edit bskyb initially faced competition from the ondigital digital terrestrial television service later renamed itv digital . itv digital failed for numerous reasons including but not limited to numerous administrative and technical failures nervous investors after a large down turn in the advertising market and the dot com crash and bskyb s aggressive marketing and domination of premium sporting rights . while bskyb had been excluded from being a part of the ondigital consortium thereby making them a competitor by default bskyb was able to join itv digital s free to air replacement freeview in which it holds an equal stake with the bbc itv channel 4 and national grid wireless . prior to october 2005 three bskyb channels were available on this platform sky news sky three and sky sports news . initially bskyb provided sky travel to the service . however this was replaced by sky three on 31 october 2005 which was itself later re branded as pick tv in 2011 . on 8 february 2007 bskyb announced its intention to replace its three free to air digital terrestrial channels with four subscription channels . it was proposed that these channels would offer a range of content from the bskyb portfolio including sport including english premier league football films entertainment and news . 30 the announcement came a day after setanta sports confirmed that it would launch in march as a subscription service on the digital terrestrial platform and on the same day that ntl s services re branded as virgin media . however industry sources believe bskyb will be forced to shelve plans to withdraw its channels from freeview and replace them with subscription channels due to possible lost advertising revenue . 31 video on demand edit main article on demand sky bskyb is facing increased competition from telecommunications providers delivering pay television services over existing telephone lines using adsl . such providers are potentially able to offer triple play or quad play packages combining land line telephone broadband internet mobile telephone and pay television services . to compete with these providers in october 2005 bskyb bought the broadband internet service provider easynet for 211 million . this acquisition allowed bskyb to start offering a sky branded broadband