Almost 3.5m Sky TV boxes are now capable of accessing on-demand content according to the firm’s latest results.
The UK’s largest provider of pay TV says 642,000 additional homes connected their Sky boxes to the internet in the three months ended 30 September 2013, taking the total to 3.4m.
The company has been highlighting its range of demand content – including TV boxsets – in the wake of competition from BT and TalkTalk who offer similar content via the YouView platform.
Sky also faces competition from US rival Netflix and Amazon’s Lovefilm.
It says customers downloaded four time as much content in the most recent quarter than previously, and also revealed an additional 219,000 subscriptions to its Sky Go Extra service.
The company also signed up 111,000 new broadband customers and now supplies 36% of customers with a triple-play package of phone, TV and broadband.
Despite the increases, profits fell 8% fall in profits to £285m, partly as a result to the record £760m annual cost of retaining its Premier League rights in the face of BT’s unexpected entry into sports programming.
Jeremy Darroch, Chief Executive, commented: “The number of connected Sky+HD boxes grew by almost 50,000 a week, faster than in any previous quarter, and we are seeing an immediate increase in usage as customers get connected. Weekly downloads through our On Demand service grew fourfold in the quarter while the number of movie rentals through Sky Store doubled on last year.
“While the consumer environment remains challenging, we are well placed as we execute a strong set of plans for the rest of the year.”