European HDTV broadcasts
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Although HDTV broadcasts had been demonstrated in Europe since the early 1990s, the first regular broadcasts started on January 1, 2004 when the Belgian company Euro1080 launched the HD1 channel with the traditional Vienna New Year's Concert. Test transmissions had been active since the IBC exhibition in September 2003, but the New Year's Day broadcast marked the official start of the HD1 channel, and the start of HDTV in Europe.[20]
Euro1080, a division of the Belgian TV services company Alfacam, broadcast HDTV channels to break the pan-European stalemate of "no HD broadcasts mean no HD TVs bought means no HD broadcasts ..." and kick-start HDTV interest in Europe.[21] The HD1 channel was initially free-to-air and mainly comprised sporting, dramatic, musical and other cultural events broadcast with a multi-lingual soundtrack on a rolling schedule of 4 or 5 hours per day. These first European HDTV broadcasts used the 1080i format with MPEG-2 compression on a DVB-S signal from SES Astra's 1H satellite. Euro1080 transmissions later changed to MPEG-4/AVC compression on a DVB-S2 signal in line with subsequent broadcast channels in Europe. The number of European HD channels and viewers has risen steadily since the first HDTV broadcasts, with SES Astra's annual Satellite Monitor market survey for 2010 reporting more than 200 commercial channels broadcasting in HD from Astra satellites, 185 million HD-Ready TVs sold in Europe (£60 million in 2010 alone), and 20 million households (27% of all European digital satellite TV homes) watching HD satellite broadcasts (16 million via Astra satellites).[22] In December 2009 the United Kingdom became the first European country to deploy high definition content on digital terrestrial television (branded as Freeview) using the new DVB-T2 transmission standard as specified in the Digital TV Group (DTG) D-book. The Freeview HD service currently contains 4 HD channels and is now rolling out region by region across the UK in accordance with the digital switchover process. Some transmitters such as the Crystal Palace transmitter are broadcasting the Freeview HD service ahead of the digital switchover by means of a temporary, low-power pre-DSO multiplex. HD-TV full package is available for our subscribers as an extra.
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Source:WiKi |
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Last Updated on Saturday, 07 January 2012 20:57
