Chris

Different times - the change from analogue to digital brought with it a massive new selling opportunity with all the additional interactive content that became available. Financially, it was worth Sky's investment to do that. They also had fewer subscribers, so fewer boxes to dish out (if you'll pardon the pun) to get customers upgraded. These days we are also talking about dual-tuner boxes with PVRs in them, and most likely HD as well. Probably more expensive than the basic digiboxes were, even back in the day.

Technically it must be possible, the question is whether Sky is developing anything at present. I'm sure they have someone doing lab tests and development, but whether they have anything anywhere near ready to market is debatable.

To drag this back on topic, Sky and VM have taken completely different tacks in the their approach to providing HD content. Sky has the raw cash available to snap up exclusive channels and to launch its own (even if most of them don't actually carry very much HD), VM has the platform to provide it in a targeted way to customers (i.e. VOD), also bypassing Sky's exclusivity in some circumstances because they are buying for a different platform.

VM has made much of VOD and clearly sees it as the way to push HD. Unfortunately for them, within about nine months they will no longer be able to claim they are the only place you can see the iPlayer on your TV because the Freesat launch of this service has been in the planning since before Freesat itself even launched.