United Kingdom: Sky HD Nearing 100,000 Homes

The number of U.K. subscribers receiving Sky HD has more than doubled over the last three months to 96,000, which the DBS firm said is the fastest ever take up of an add-on Sky product. Still, that's but a tiny fraction of the company's dish universe of 8.25 million subs.

Sky currently offers a dozen HD channels, with some outlets featuring mostly American fare. It recently acquired the rights to the scripted series "Lost," which will be screened on Sky One HD later this fall.

Starting this week, Sky subs that purchase new HD sets are eligible to receive $284 "cash-backs" toward the cost of a Sky HD receiver.

Sky's HD add-on is doing far better than its broadband offering, to date. Its fairly new Internet service (free to existing subs) now has one million "registrations"--although less than one percent (74,000) has actually asked to be connected to the high-speed service.