Media: All about ... Sky+ and emerging PVR services.

Sky talks up its Sky+ service as rivals look to strike.

Sky hasn't wasted any time in getting its New Year PR machine rolling. It hardly gave us the chance to scrape the pine needles and tinsel off the carpets before putting out a triumphant press release announcing subscription levels to its Sky+ personal video recorder service had breached the two-million mark ahead of schedule. The number of Sky+ boxes in homes also grew by by more than 50 per cent.

We shouldn't be that surprised Sky is making the most of this milestone, since it coincides with a number of potential threats to its position as the dominant pay-TV provider in the UK.

Setanta is muscling in on its football and golf coverage; there's new competition in the form of BT Vision, and there are also predictions that Freeview will be in more homes than Sky by the end of 2008.

There is also a renewed challenge from ntl:Telewest, soon to be part of the relaunched Virgin Media, which developed its own rival PVR to Sky+ last year, and will soon offer a 'quadruple play' of TV, broadband, fixed-line and mobile.

It is against this backdrop that Sky is talking up the impact of Sky+, comparing the effect of PVR's on TV viewing habits to that of the iPod on music. However, it is also at pains to point out that the meltdown for TV advertisers predicted in the first half of the decade has yet to materialise.

Past research has indicated that PVR owners see 30 per cent less advertising than other viewers, but while Sky has done some research into the levels of ad-skipping, it has not been particularly forthcoming in publishing these statistics.