Sky lose out to Telewest on HD ITV World Cup games

15 May 2006 12:16 GMT / By Stuart Miles

In what has to be a coup for Telewest, the cable company has announced that it will be showing all the World Cup matches from both the BBC and ITV.

However Sky customers who have signed up to the satellite broadcasters HD package will be disappointed to hear that they will not be getting the ITV games in High definition.

Only Telewest customers, plus a closed group of terrestrial HD triallists, will have access to all the games in high definition, offering pictures around four times sharper than standard digital TV.

An ITV spokeswomen told Pocket-lint "The commercial terms Sky offered to ITV didn't represent the value we felt they were worth".

Live coverage of World Cup football will start from 9 June.

Viewers will also get documentaries including the epic new wildlife series Jean-Michel Cousteau's Ocean Adventures, classic films like All Quiet on the Western Front and the Big Sleep, plus drama including Agatha Christie's Poirot specials Death on the Nile and Murder in Mesopotamia - all courtesy of Granada International.

Promising a summer packed with high definition entertainment, ntl Telewest has also signed a third deal with Channel 4. The Channel 4 deal will allow customers to watch Lost and Desperate Housewives episodes on demand from a virtual video library.

Viewers will need Telewest's TVDrive and an HD-ready television set to watch
high definition programmes.

Full tags

Home Cinema, TV shows, Sky, Telewest