HDTV in Germany
The first station to start broadcasting HDTV in Europe is ProSiebenSat.1, which launched its HDTV service on Wednesday.
The free-to-air broadcaster plans to show selected programmes in HDTV on its two main channels, ProSieben and Sat.1, starting with the Hollywood blockbuster “Minority Report” starring Tom Cruise on Sunday.
Other European broadcasters including BSkyB in Britain, CanalSat in France and Sky Italia in Italy have all promised HDTV by next June in time for the soccer World Cup, which will be used as a showcase for the format.
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October 27th, 2005 at 10:13 am
Hi,
ProSiebenSat.1 is the first ” free-to-air” HD broadcaster in Europe. Euro1080 and CANAL+ Nordic are already broadcasting in HDTV in MPEG-2.
But ProSiebenSat.1 uses DVB-S2 and MPEG-4 / H264 for transmission, and there is currently no compatible setop box available in Europe. No consumer can watch their program in HD! Not such a big problem, because they are transmitting mostly upconverted SD footage.
With regards
Heinz Bihlmeir
October 27th, 2005 at 10:16 am
Now how does that make sense? Why would they broadcast something nobody can receive?
Wait…
Were politicians involved?