Virgin Media, the UK's second largest pay digital TV provider, has reported a 50% rise in the number of views for its on-demand digital TV service.
Virgin Media announced a total of 750 million views in 2009, with nearly 300 million views for BBC iPlayer on Virgin Media since its launch in May 2008.
The on-demand TV service is delivered via a fibre-optic broadband connection into the digital set-top box. This allows digital TV customers to access a very large library of content from central Virgin Media servers.
Virgin Media said that over 59% of its 3.7 million digital TV customers are now regularly using the on-demand digital TV service, an increase of over a quarter of a million homes during 2009. The VoD service received 76 million views in December alone, up 6% on the previous month.
ITV Player, which has been available on Virgin Media since January last year, had 25 million views over the last three months, boosted by high-rating shows such as 'The X Factor' and 'I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!'
Other successes included 'Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince' and 'Monsters Vs Aliens' as Virgin Media's movies on-demand service increased 29% in December, versus November. As a result over 11 million movies were watched on demand throughout 2009.
Children's TV, including Disney content available on Virgin Media, such as High School Musical and Hannah Montana, was also popular, receiving nearly 22 million views in 2009.
These results position Virgin Media well against the new threat from Project Canvas and other on-demand TV services emerging such as Fetch TV and SeeSaw TV, which make use of the proliferation of broadband connections into the digital TV in the living room (either via a direct broadband connection or a broadband enabled digital set top box).
