Published:
21-Oct-08
SES Astra have announced an additional 13 HD channels have been launched on the company's key European orbital slots within the last 90 days. The 13 additional channels bring Astra's European total to 55 out of around 170 unique channels broadcast currently on all platforms.
In addition, Astra are soon to launch their most recent satellite at the end of October 2008, the 1M. The 1M will be launched from Kazakhstan on 31 October and will be positioned at orbital 19.2 E, the major pan-European slot carrying content for operators such as Canal Digitaal, CanalSat, Digital Plus, Premiere and TV Vlaanderen. The 1M will be in place to increase capacity further for HD content, and will free up capacity to be repositioned at 23.5 E. This orbital slot sits in between the major pan-European 19.2 E and the heavily used UK 28.2 E slot. 23.5 E currently covers Czech Republic , Germany, Netherlands and Slovakia with expansions in the Eastern European market being a prime opportunity for the new configuration.
Our take...
The opportunity for HD transmission in Europe is still rapidly growing with the UK leading the pack, however there are still five times fewer channels in any given language than the US market. The total number of HD channels played out to the largest 18 European countries is expected to reach 170 by the end of 2008, up from 81 in 2007 and Screen Digest expects HD playout to almost double again over the next five years.
While virtually all current European HD uses MPEG-4 compression and a growing number are using DVB-S2 transmission, the per channel load for the average HD channels is still significantly higher than for SD MPEG-2 transmission. As operators demand more HD content and channels to differentiate, infrastructure and uplink providers such as SES Astra and Eutelsat will be further forced to increase capacity and expand their fleet where possible.
Germany,
Netherlands,
UK,
