Digital terrestrial television in Denmark

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Digital terrestrial television in Denmark was officially launched in March 2006 after some years of public trials. The analogue broadcasts are scheduled to be shut down at 31st of October 2009.

As of February 2008, only one national multiplex is available, broadcasting DR1, DR2, TV 2 and a channel shared by DR Update and sign language simulcast of DR/TV2 news using the DVB-T technology and MPEG-2 compression in 64-QAM mode.

1 History
- 1.1 Pre-launch
- 1.2 National launch
2 References
3 External links

[edit] History

[edit] Pre-launch

In 1999, a trial was launched in Copenhagen and Zealand. Another trial was launched in 2002 on northern Jutland, broadcasting the three public service channels and an experimental regional channel called "TV2/Nord-Digital".

In June 2005, a broad majority consisting of Venstre, the Conservative People's Party, the Social Democrats, the Radical Liberal Party, the Socialist People's Party and Danish People's Party agreed that the analogue broadcasts would cease in October 2009.

[edit] National launch

The official launch was made on March 31, 2006 after some months of national trials with one multiplex covering the entire country. It offered the national analogue channels DR1 and TV 2, as well as DR2, a stream for signed simulcasts of news programmes on the three other channels and the MHP services DR extra and TV 2 Extra. February 19th, 2008, DR Update started broadcasting on the simulcast channel when this channel was not used for simulcasting (between 17 and 20 o'clock). The multiplex was operated by I/S DIGI-TV, a joint-venture between DR and TV 2.

On June 11, 2007 the Danish Ministry of Culture announced that the six partys had agreed on how the extension of the network would continue. Four multiplexes would be given to a commercial gatekeeper which would be required to have a varied offering and would be chosen through a "beauty contest". Another multiplex, MUX 2, would be made available for public service broadcasting, carrying the children and history channel from DR, a parliament channel, more airtime for the TV 2 regions, public access television and further capacity for DR. ^[1]

It is expected that the new multiplexes will use the more efficient MPEG-4 compression. MUX 1 will continue using MPEG-2 until 2012 when it switches to MPEG-4.

On March 27, 2008 Boxer got the gatekeeper rights, and will carry about 30 SD channels, some HDTV and DVB-H (from 2010)

Three of the commercial multiplexes will be made available at the analogue switch-off, while the fourth will be available in October 2010. The commercial gatekeeper would be required to carry at least one channel from neighbouring countries and a local channel. A maximum of 25 percent of the capacity could be used for "high-pay" channels (such as Canal+) and if the gatekeeper would like to offer mobile television (DVB-H), 15 percent of the capacity on multiplex used for mobile television would have to given to DR.^[2]