Sky profits soar by 26% and it cuts HD box price

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It is cutting the price of the High Definition version of the Sky+ box from £149 to £49 but reckons it will recover the price cut within a year from new subscribers because High Definition costs an extra £9.75 a month.

Chief executive Jeremy Darroch said: "With 31 HD channels, we have the UK's best HD service and the time has come to push harder so that more customers can enjoy its superb picture and sound quality."

He pointed out that while some seven million HD-ready TV sets are owned in the UK, only around one million of these are hooked up to full HD broadcasts with Sky's 780,000 HD customers being the bulk of them.

Darroch said the drive for HD customers would create around 1000 jobs including more engineers and more call centre staff in London, Leeds and Scotland.

In the run-up to Christmas, Sky beat City expectations by attracting a net 171,000 new subscribers up from the 167,000 who signed up a year previously. That helped push up revenues for the first half to the end of December by 6% to £2.6 billion, with operating profits up 26% to £388 million. The dividend is lifted 5% to 7.5p a share.

The next round of football Premier League broadcasting rights through to 2013 will be announced next month.