Sky is to knock £99 off the price of its Sky HD satellite TV set-top box, reducing the price of the hardware from £249 to £150.

It's hard to see the decision not motivated by the arrival of Freesat and its free-to-air HD offering, but whatever Sky's reasons, the move will see installation cost new subscribers £30 - upgraders have to pay £60.

To get the HD channels, you'll need to cough up for a tenner-a-month package - down from £16 a month.

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The price reduction will be accompanied by a small name change: the box will become Sky+ HD, the better to tie it in with Sky's current standard-definition DVR offering, not to mention all the Sky+ advertising it's doing at the moment.

Sky's HD line-up includes Freesat stalwart BBC HD, but also Channel 4 HD, in addition to HD versions of Sky's own SkyOne, SkyMovies, SkyArts and SkySports, plus Discovery, National Geographic and the Hitler Channel... sorry... History Channel - must be all the many World War II documentaries it runs...

The Sky HD price cut comes into force next month.

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