Igloo (New Zealand)
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| Joint-venture between Sky Network Television and TVNZ | |
| Industry | Prepaid Subscription Television |
| Founded | December 2011 |
| Defunct | March 2017 |
| Headquarters | Auckland, New Zealand |
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Key people
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John Fellet, CEO of Sky Peter Macourt, Chairman of Sky Sir John Anderson, Chairman of TVNZ, Chaz Savage, GM of IGLOO |
| Products | Igloo Prepaid Pay TV |
| Website | igloo.co.nz |
Igloo was a New Zealand prepaid pay TV service launched on 3 December 2012. The Pace supplied receiver provides customers access to free-to-air channels through Freeview, and a small selection of pay TV channels can be purchased for 30 days. On March 1st 2017 Igloo closed and the receiver was updated to allow viewers to use New Zealand's FreeView television service.
Igloo was founded by Sky Network Television and TVNZ in December 2011. Details were announced on December 8 via a press release. Sky held a 51% share in the venture while TVNZ, the minority shareholder has 49%. TVNZ later sold their shares back to Sky in 2013 before completely exiting the venture in 2014.
Igloo was originally scheduled to start during the first half of 2012, however, they encountered delays and had to push the launch date back to December 2012. The service offers free-to-air HD (via terrestrial), along with pay TV channels provided by Sky, to a set top box being developed by Sky. It will use digital terrestrial frequencies owned by Sky previously used for their analogue terrestrial offering (which is no longer offered). Sky was required to make use of the spectrum or it would be taken by the Government.
In July 2016 Sky announced that Igloo will end its transmissions from March 2017. Customers will no longer be able to purchase Igloo Channel Packs, watch Front Row events or Igloo On Demand. Igloo boxes will still be able to receive Freeview channels but without any technical support or the EPG.
The service is targeted at individuals who may not be able to commit to a contract or do not need all of the channels available from the regular Sky pay TV offering.
Viewers can order live sport events via pay-per-view on the Front Row channel, as well as stream TV shows and movies using a broadband connection. The device provided by Igloo has the ability to "live pause" when a USB flash drive is inserted (as there is no hard disk drive built into the device). An 8GB flash drive will allow for around 60 minutes of live pause.
Pay-channel broadcasting is DVB-T2 256-QAM transport via UHF channel 30 (546 MHz) or 31 (554 MHz). This is separate from the DVB-T 64-QAM transports used by Freeview.
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