The Competition Commission has decided against regulating to reduce BSkyB’s grip on the UK pay TV movies market, according to a report in the Mail on Sunday newspaper.

The commission’s preliminary report, due to be released this week, is expected to conclude that the entry of online movie rivals including Netflix and Lovefilm has reduced the need to regulate the market by weakening BSkyB’s dominance, according to the report.

The Competition Commission said in March that it would look again at its earlier finding that Sky’s first subcription pay TV window deals with Hollywood studios were anti-competitive in the light of the development of the online offerings.

Media and telecoms regulator Ofcom warned the commission in April not to overestimate the impact of Netflix and Lovefilm on the UK market, arguing that Netflix and Lovefilm’s long-term deals with the studios largely covered the second subscription pay TV window, and Sky remained dominant in rights to first subscription pay TV window movie content. However, the Mail’s story, if true, indicates that the Competition Commission has decided that the impact of the online services is sufficient to weaken Sky’s hold on the market.

The commission is expected to publish its final report in July.

Separately, News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch moved to squash a report in the Daily Telegraph newspaper that the company was considering spinning its UK newspapers off into a trust or selling or part of its stake in them. There has been speculation that News Corp might consider spinning off its UK newspapers in order to secure its grip on its more profitable pay TV activities in the wake of the phone hacking scandal, and possibly, in the future, to renew its attempt to take full control of BSkyB.

UK pay TV group BSkyB reported strong results this morning, adding 15,000 TV subs and has 10.3 million TV customers.

The company was keen to flag that with 3.2 million customers now take TV, internet and telephony, meaning it has eclipsed Virgin Media as the largest triple play provider in the UK. The total subscriber base is now 10.55 million.

Sky had 4.2 million HD subs at the end of March. It also said that 250,000 of its customers could now watch its 3D service. Sky reported a 5% year-on-year increase in revenue of £5.1 billion (€6.2 billion) for the nine months to end-March. Operating profit increased 25%, taking the total to £939 million. “In what remains a tough economic environment, strong and consistent execution of our plan has delivered good growth across our product range,” said Jeremy Darroch, Sky’s CEO.  “The decision to focus our marketing on home communications has paid off with our fastest quarter of growth since launch and confirmation that Sky is now Britain’s favourite triple play provider.”

BSkyB’s programming deal with HBO and increased investment in original content contributed to an £88 million rise in programming costs in the nine months to end March. The news Corp-backed UK pay TV operator inked an output deal with HBO in mid-2010 and then created the Sky Atlantic channel in early 2011 to house that content. It has also recently invested in a raft of original UK programming and has pledged to spend £600 million a year on British content by 2014. These programming initiatives were largely responsible for a 5% increase in programming costs, taking the total to £1.7 billion.

Channel costs also increased, £22 million, as Sky added new high definition channels to its service.

Freesat have announced they will carry all of the BBC’s 24 live HD Olympic channels throughout the London 2012 Olympics, offering the full range of live BBC Olympics coverage, bringing every Olympic sport from every Olympic venue.

In addition to the 24 temporary BBC HD Olympics channels listed in the Freesat TV Guide, Freesat viewers will also be able to access the live 'streams' via the BBC Red Button service.

As long as your Humax unit is left in standby at night (not powered off or left on) your unit should pick these channels up automatically, or alternatively you can manually retune when they are launched. For further information closer to the Olympics please go to www.freesat.co.uk

UK public broadcaster the BBC has launched a new sports application for connected TVs. It allows viewers to access interactive and enhanced coverage of a host of sporting events.

The first event covered will be Formula 1 motor racing with the app providing access to live streams, on-demand video and other additional content around races the BBC is covering including a ‘driver tracker’ that shows where each car is on the race circuit.

Separately, the BBC has added live and sporting events to its international iPlayer service. The University boat race is one of the first sporting events that has been made available on the catch-up service.

The range of services offering coverage of the London Olympic Games to UK viewers is to include 3D coverage from Eurosport and up to 48 services from the BBC, available across a range of platforms.

Pay TV broadcaster BSkyB is to carry Eurosport’s 3D coverage of the games to Sky Plus HD homes. Eurosport will broadcast more than 100 hours of 3D content over the course of the games, including of around eight hours a day of live coverage alongside four additional hours of the day’s main highlights.

The BBC meanwhile will deliver 24 live HD streams of Olympic coverage, and SD simulcasts, via its red-button service.

Cable and satellite providers will be able to deliver the same 24 streams that will be available via the BBC Sport website via the Red Button service and corresponding EPG channels. Via these new red button services and the standard EPG platform listings, viewers will be able to switch between 24 SD or HD channels. Combined, this coverage will deliver around 2,500 hours of live sport coverage through the various BBC platforms during the Games, according to the BBC.

Services will be made available to PCs, mobile phones, tablets and connected TVs.

BSkyB and Freesat will both air all 48 services, which will be broadcast via the Astra satellite platform at 28.2° East.

British commercial broadcaster ITV is expected to launch its own pay video-on-demand service in the second half of 2012.

The broadcaster is set to launch transactional and subscription style services to its ITV Player later this year and will develop services based around micropayments.

This comes after ITV recently inked deals with Netflix, Lovefilm and Sky for catch up access to a number of its series.

Investment bank Morgan Stanley notes that ITV’s arrangements with these digital services are favourable and could become even more so depending on viewership. “We believe there is an annual fee arrangement between the two parties and that terms could expand depending on the level of viewership of ITV content. We believe ITV is peculiarly well positioned amongst free to air broadcasters to catch this market shift,” it noted.

The bank also says that ITV’s existing video-on-demand deals with Virgin Media and BT Vision are set to expire later this year and are likely to be renewed on more favourable terms. “Our understanding is that these are currently flat fee deals and that these are likely to be shifted onto a basis with a greater variable reward element and for which ITV clearly expects to be paid more,” Morgan Stanley noted.

The upcoming over-the-top streaming service from BSkyB will be called NOW TV, Jeremy Darroch, CEO of the UK pay TV operator revealed today.

Darroch said that NOW TV will have hundreds of movies from Sky channels and various other TV shows and series and sports coverage will be added later. The launch of the service was announced soon after Netflix confirmed it would roll out in the UK.

Darroch said: “Having two brands will allow us to meet the needs and preferences of different customer segments more effectively. We’ll offer two distinctive ways to watch: the market-leading full Sky service for the whole family, complete with the widest range of channels, high quality products like Sky Plus, HD and Sky Go, and the peace of mind of a monthly bill; or the flexible, more spontaneous, pay-as-you-go service of NOW TV.”

NOW TV will launch later this year. There will be various pricing models from pay-as-you-go to monthly subscriptions. The service will be available on PCs, Macs, laptops, tablets, mobile phones, games consoles and connected TVs.

The UK’s Digital Television Group (DTG) has unveiled next-generation features for the Freeview digital-terrestrial platform. The features will be set out in detail in the updated ‘D-Book’, which will be published at the end of March.

New features will include an enhanced EPG with the ability to go both backwards and forwards, remote booking allowing viewers to book recordings or set reminders remotely and a clear reference to MHEG-standardised interactivity.

The DTG also said it would begin work on new features to enable second-screen and home networking applications in the spring.

The latest enhancements build on the current edition of the D-Book, D-Book 7, published in 2011. The second version of the ETSI MHEG standard, published in 2011, brought it in line with D-Book 6.2 and introduced a number of technical solutions from other platforms that have adopted MHEG. The new version of the D-Book, references ETSI directly and contains only clarifications and profiles that are specific to the UK’s requirements.

The DTG’s director-general, Richard Lindsay-Davies said: “The Digital TV Group has balanced UK business requirements and high consumer expectations with the increasing demands of globalisation and business complexity to deliver another world leading digital television standard for Freeview.”

The DTG has also set up a new accessibility group to build on existing ‘U-book’ specifications to drive enhancements to subtitles, audio description and text-to-speech for connected devices.

The DTG’s technology director and editor of the D-Book, Simon Gauntlett, will discuss the enhancements in detail, as well as the D-Book’s adoption of international standards, at the DTG Summit on Friday.

Freeview managing director Ilse Howling raised the possibility that connected TV services could reach a mass audience on Freeview without the need for a YouView set-top box at today’s Digital Television Group (DTG) summit in London.

Howling said that while total Freeview sales stood at 20 million as of today, sales of Freeview HD devices already stood at 4.4 million.  Of those, she said, only 400,000 were of set-top boxes, with the bulk being integrated digital TVs.

“What people are buying are connected TVs,” she said. “YouView will be a set-top box offer…[that] will have a valuable place for more sophisticated consumers.”

Within the Freeview HD universe there are already 2.6 million connected TVs, said Howling. “There is a very big market starting there and all of use want to embrace that connected opportunity.”

Howling said that the latest version of the DTG’s D-Book, which includes a specification for an enhanced EPG that can look backwards as well as forwards in time, could help deliver sophisticated connected TV services without the need for an additional set-top.

Asked if there was a case for a separate consumer brand to help consumer identify compatible devices, Howling said it was conceivable that “there may be scope for something like ‘Freeview Smart’ – who knows where that could go. If you do use specification branding, it does help consumers.”

Earlier, Howling said that Freeview’s research showed that the most popular innovations on the platform were those around the EPG. “It’s exciting to see a specification for an enhanced EPG being signed off in the D-book this month,” she said, adding that the BBC would likely look at how to use that to deliver new services.

Howling also said that any enhancement to the platform would be rooted in the principle that the service should remain predominantly based on free TV. “We will carry on defending the free TV space and we will make sure hybrid is not used as a smokescreen to erode the principle of free TV in this country,” she said.

Speaking at the same event, David Cutts, managing director of DTT technology specialist S&T, said that the MHEG Interaction Channel (MHEG-IC) could be used effectively to delivery hybrid services. MHEG-IC is specified as part of D-book 6. “All Freeview HD services are in principle connectable,” said Cutts.

D-book 6.2.1 extended this by providing for encrypted streams and seamless stream transition, and this has been a requirement for products from 2011. Cutts said that “millions of units” sold this year would be compatible with D-book 6.2.1.

Second-generation Freesat products and YouView products will also have this capability. However, few of these devices are likely to achieve mass penetration this year.

S&T used the DTG event to demonstrate a beta service with technology provider BiBC showing NBC Universal’s PictureBox video-on-demand service on a Freesat device and a trial catch-up service for Irish broadcaster RTÉ with dynamic advertising insertion.

The BBC has confirmed that it will air some Olympic events, including the men’s 100 metre final, in 3D.

The public broadcaster will also deliver 3D coverage of the opening and closing ceremonies and a highlights package at the end of each day. 3D content will be available via the BBC’s HD channel on all platforms.

The coverage is one of a number of 3D trials being undertaken by the BBC. Last year it aired the men’s and ladies’ finals of the Wimbledon Championships in 3D as well as the final of Strictly Come Dancing.

Kim Shillinglaw, head of BBC 3D, said: “We have always said we believe some of 2012 should be captured in 3D, and we’re delighted to confirm our offer to audiences in the UK, providing them with a new way of getting close to some of the key moments from the London 2012 Olympic Games.”