Liberty Global launches Horizon TV in Ireland

Liberty Global’s Horizon

Liberty Global has launched its next generation Horizon TV set-top service in Ireland, enabled by a half billion euro investment in fibre-powered broadband by its European division UPC.

Liberty’s Irish operator UPC Ireland launched the set-top box yesterday, which allows users to record up to four programmes simultaneously while watching a fifth, and to access their TV service across different devices like smartphones and tablets.

Other features of the service include programme suggestions based on users’ viewing habits, the inclusion of 19 HD channels as standard from broadcasters including RTE, TG4, Sky and the BBC, and the availability of 27 Horizon apps at launch including those from YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

Speaking at the launch, Mark Coan, vice-president sales and marketing of UPC Ireland, said that with the introduction of Horizon it was “taking television to the next level.” The service is designed to offer TV, broadband and phone services in one box, with 100Mb broadband as standard as part of the Horizon Essential Bundle.

“UPC Horizon TV will completely transform consumers’ TV experience, by doing two extraordinary things, bringing Irish consumers closer to the TV they love in better and new ways, and putting all their services together in one clever box. These services combine to make a unique product which is unmatched by any other TV provider,” said Coan.

The set-top launch comes after UPC first introduced an Irish Horizon TV App and Horizon TV Online service, offering access to 45 channels across multiple devices in the home, back in April.

In its latest earnings call last week Liberty said that it was introducing Horizon to the Irish and German markets “in the coming weeks” with the German rollout expected in early September.

Horizon TV, which is already live in two European markets, had more than 270,000 subscribers as of the end of July – 185,000 in the Netherlands and 85,000 in Switzerland.