Digital television in Germany
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[edit] Terrestrial
Terrestrial reception had lost most of its users by the 1990s due to extensive cable and satellite coverage. In a two step process in 2003 analogue terrestrial TV broadcasting in the states of Berlin and Brandenburg was switched off to be replaced by DVB-T, until 2005 about two-third of Germany's states at least started to replace analogue transmission, too. By 2006, all metropolitan and most of the rural areas have moved to digital transmission. DVB-T coverage is planned to be around 90% of Germany by end of 2007, analogue television broadcasting is to be completely terminated by 2010.
While the public broadcasters ARD and ZDF transmit throughout Germany, commercial stations are only available within metropolitan areas, so the number of available channels varies between about 10 and 30. All channels are free-to-air and the broadcasters rent transmissions services directly from a transmitter operator, which is usually the Deutsche Telekom. ARD stations additionally use their own transmitters, too.
[edit] Satellite
Digital satellite television has been available in Germany since 1996. Most of the 30+ TV stations broadcast their satellite signal in both analogue and digital (DVB-S) forms. There is currently a single Pay TV satellite operation in Germany Premiere World, which (in form of its former owner Leo Kirch) got into serious fiscal trouble due to its early and proprietary (Betacrypt, d-box) enforcement of DTV.
Broadcast is always in DVB and SDTV PAL.
In autumn 2004 German channel group ProSieben showed a BBC documentary and a self produced TV movie, and in March 2005 the Hollywood flicks Spider-Man and Men in Black II using 1080i, MPEG-2 and DVB-S. These were intended to be a test for future commercial HD services.
Regular programming of the HD versions of ProSieben and Sat.1, both free to air, began on 26 October 2005 for at least one year. Most programming is upscaled SD material still. Unlike the test broadcasts, DVB-S2 and MPEG-4 AVC is now used, because this is what the major pay TV service Premiere announced to be using.
Premiere itself, after several delays, finally started broadcasting three HD channels—one dedicated to each of movies, sports and documentaries—in November 2005, although there were virtually no suitable, certified receivers available on the market. The contents, too, is sparse and thus repeated often. Premiere reuses its proprietary digital rights management system embedded into its content scrambling system (Nagravision) from SD broadcasts to block analogue output of the movie channel from the receiving set-top box altogether, only allowing HDCP-secured transmissions; the other channels are less restricted.
For the time being, neither of the services is available via DVB-T nor DVB-C.
German channels producers and hardware companies hope for a breakthrough of HDTV sales just before the FIFA World Cup 2006 which will be broadcasted in HDTV on Premiere, also via cable. Big marketing was done at the IFA 2005. However, first reports seem to indicate flat panel TV sales have not picked up as much as anticipated. [1]
HDTV is broadcast via Cable and Satellite on 2 channels. PremiereHD and AnixeHD. ProSiebenHD and Sat1HD have stopped broadcasting in HD until 2010. [2] All channels are broadcast using the h.264 codec. The public channels ARD and ZDF are considering starting their HDTV channel(s) in 2010, though it's still unknown how many channels will be broadcast and if terrestrial is going to be a part of their strategy to get HDTV into German living rooms.
[edit] Cable
Cable transmission is still mostly analogue with usually about 30 available channels. DVB-C transmission started in 2004 with the pay tv Premiere and a set of the digital versions of the analogue channels.
The rather late changeover to DVB was caused both by the long process of selling the infrastructure from former monopolist Deutsche Telekom to others and the fact that the cable network ends at the curb or property, with the in-house cable in large apartment buildings being operated by a different company. Due to this, the new owners of Deutsche Telekom's cable network were in many cases not able to offer new products directly to the viewer.
By 2006, there are three major cable operators, Unity Media in the states of Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia, Kabel BW in Baden-Württemberg and the by far largest, Kabel Deutschland in the 13 other states. Today, all companies offer about 200 TV channels by DVB-C, which includes some 70 channels at no extra charge as well as a number of pay-per-view offers and subscription-based packages. In addition to that pay TV broadcasters Premiere (various genres) and, in some networks, Arena (offering Germany's premiere soccer league) are available.
In some very large apartment complexes a number of local and national companies operate an in-house cable network which is fed solely by its own satellite antenna on the building, not the local cable operator. The satellite channels are either transcoded into analogue transmission, receivable by any TV set without extra equipment, or into DVB-C.
[edit] References
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