Our take...
The termination of ProSiebenSat.1 HD channels is a vote of no confidence in German HD TV. The group was an HD pioneer in Europe, launching its HD feeds as early as October 2005. ProSieben blamed the termination of the channels on a disappointing consumer uptake (only 150,000 homes watching the HD feeds, through cable or satellite after two years of operation). The audience was too small to justify the uplink and transmission costs. Despite the set-back, ProSieben hinted that it will re-launch the channels in 2010, by which time it will have extra transponder capacity and the HD-ready market should have developed.

ProSieben's move represents yet another blow for pay TV operator Premiere, which is also having trouble selling HD to the German public. Its HD package added just two further pay HD channels to those offered by ProSieben. Premiere reached just 110,000 HD subscribers at the end of 2007 after two full years offering the package. Premiere HD quarterly additions are currently running at 15,000, compared to 60,000 for BSkyB in the UK. Due to the lack of HD content in Germany, we forecast only 4.6m HD homes (of which 750,000 for Premiere) in Germany by 2012, or 12 per cent of the population, half our Western Europe average forecast uptake (25 per cent).

In stark contrast to Germany, Austria will kick-start its HD migration in the next few weeks as public broadcaster ORF introduces an ORF1 simulcast before the UEFA Soccer Championship due to take place this summer in Austria and Switzerland. The feed should begin on free satellite and rapidly become available through IPTV (trials are already underway with Telekom Austria) and digital cable.