Analogue satellite safe in Germany

The German state broadcasters ARD and ZDF have both renewed their deals with SES for analogue carriage on Astra 1 until 2010.

The 2010 date was arrived at because that is the earliest date at which the German government will consider an end to analogue satellite transmission - and only then if market conditions allow it.

It's so nice to see a country get it right on digital, and not just launch into the 'we must convert everything to digital! we must hype digital for all it's worht! everyone must watch digital! analogue is the terrible relation which we must kill off now!' b**locks which the UK government spout out. 2010 is a realistic date for *thinking* about ending analogue. The 2005 date for *having changed totally* to digital date which the UK government were aiming for until recently is incredibly out of touch with the market place where, despite what they would have you believe, analogue still reigns supreme.

And IIRC, Germany has had (or at least had plans in place) for digital television for longer than we have too.

I agree entirely.

The Government has been rather foolish in stating a 2008/2010 analogue switchoff date. If you look at the only other example you have of this kind of thing in the past (the end of VHF broadcasting), from the very beginning of UHF in the UK in 1967 to the end of VHF in (please correct me!) 1985 or '86 is very nearly twenty years. And in that case people really could see a benefit in converting - colour television! With digital the benefits aren't quite as obvious.

I would have thought an analogue switchoff date of 2020 might, in fact, be more realistic. After all, can you even buy integrated digital portable tvs yet?

Actually, UHF started in 1964 with BBC2. The final VHF transmitters were switched off in 1985 - in total a changeover time of 21 years. People will say that the market conditions have changed since then, and I agree with them; back then most people had only a single television set to replace. Today, the average household switching totally to digital reception would need to replace 4 or 5 TV sets, 2 VCR's, and a pocket TV. VCRs and pocket TV's with digital tuners don't even exist yet in the consumer sector as far as I am away. Some people really don't grasp how much analogue terrestrial is still relied upon - which is why ending it soon is a ridiculous concept.


I personally will be amazed if analogue terrestrial isn't still around 10 years from now. Some time between 2015 and 2020 is the timeframe I would expect for analogue swtichover to occur.

And no, I don't think you can buy any digital portable TVs yet - they've concentrated purley on the big front room TV sector; a rather 70's attitude if ever there was one.

Agreed on this - switching off analouge shouldn't even happen at all. We still have AM on our radios now, despite the fact that FM has reigned supreme since the late 1980s. Same goes for digital telly. The problem is, the picture quality isn't that much improved compared to a good-quality signal. And the extra choice thing merely results in a 200-channels-and-nothing-on setup.

What is needed is better programming on digital, before we can even think about switching analouge off. ITV1 and BBC1 are already poor and a dilution of markets is killing everyting - particularly in the music and shopping regions. The technical standards of many channels are appaling. (Several Asian channels look like they're run off of VHS and even I could run Friendly TV!))

Quite frankly the music market is saturated: MTV, MTV Hits, MTV Dance, MTV Base, MTV2, VH1, VH1 Classic, The Box, Smash Hits!, Kiss, Q, Kerrang!, Channel U, Chart Show TV, P-Rock, Classic FM TV, Scuzz, Flaunt and The Amp... the Amp is the only unique product in that bunch actually. I could go to those channels now and find about 3 or 4 playing the same track. When Will Young's Evergreen came out THAT was playlisted on every Emap channel except Kerrang! and possibly Kiss.

Shopping - you've got everything from QVC to Bid-Up.tv there to God knows what... UK Gold repeats from 1999 earliest! What's going on?

I think we actually need to scrap it all and start again...

And herein will lie the problem because as stated most homes have more than one telly and one video recorder (we have five active TV's and four active video recorders in our house alone) and all of them are still geared up towards analogue broadcasting.

Add to that of course the Sky Digital boxes (and their predecessors for Sky Analogue) all only have one tuner so you can't watch, say, Sky One and record something off the Discovery Channel. It's all very well Freeview and that but it suffers from the same "one channel only" thing as well.

2010 was a ridiculous target date anyway, 2020 is more realistic. I see the Germans have the right attitude towards this. Why can we not do anything right or have any kind of "proper attitude" towards anything in this country?

Actually they are far ahead of us in analogue turn-off.

In Berlin analogue TV transmissions have been turned off completely and replaced with DTT.... the first location in the world where this has happened.

http://www.dvb.org/index.php?id=10&nid=35

Yep - though Berlin is a very interesting "one-off" - as it had a very odd analogue infrastructure, a relic of its split between East and West Berlin (where East German broadcasts were once SECAM and West PAL?) I think that most of the transmitters covered quite a small area and were relatively low power. It was a prime candidate for rationalisation and moving to a new system.

I think moving Crystal Palace to digital only - which would be the equivalent to Berlin going DTT only - is quite a different scenario?? (ISTR that CP covers at least 9 million people?) Not sure if that includes the number of relays fed from it...

About 11million including relays - a massive operation to change that lot over to DTT.

It would be easy to convert somewhere with a small population like the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man though

Is there anyway at all of receiving German television via my DSat dish, without having it's angle changed. If so, does anyone know the frequencies, pref for ZDF and ARD.

Slightly off topic, but does anyone know when CNN, CNBC Europe and Eurosport Intl are due for closure on Astra 19E analogue?

Yep - though as ever the Channel Islands has the complication of having to fit into French channel allocations as well

Not really, if they closed down analogue they'd have at least 4 UHF allocations that could be used! Also the interferance wouldn't be so much because DTT tx power is lower.

The high penetration of DSat viewers on the islands is a major advantage