The remaining analogue German channels that are broadcasting on Astra 19.2 will close down on 30 April 2012, marking the end of analogue satellite in Europe.
At the moment, about 30 analogue channels can still be accessed if you point a satellite dish at 19.2. Five of them have been broadcasting continously on the same frequency since the early days of Astra when there was only one satellite. Eurosport, RTL, Pro7 and Sat1 all launched in 1989, and I believe 3sat followed in 1990.
After the closedown, ARD and ZDF will use the freed-up capacity to launch no less than 10 new HD channels (25 if you count all the regional variations). Six more are coming in 2014.
The remaining analogue German channels that are broadcasting on Astra 19.2 will close down on 30 April 2012, marking the end of analogue satellite in Europe.
At the moment, about 30 analogue channels can still be accessed if you point a satellite dish at 19.2. Five of them have been broadcasting continously on the same frequency since the early days of Astra when there was only one satellite. Eurosport, RTL, Pro7 and Sat1 all launched in 1989, and I believe 3sat followed in 1990.
Ah - fond memories of the 16 analogue services on the transponders on Astra 1 at launch. Very useful for a German A level they were too...
The German public service broadcasters do seem to be very well funded.
Looking at their transponder lists - they're packing a lot of services onto some transponders (particularly those that are DVB-S not S2). Do they do what, I believe, the Swedes do - which is PID switch during regional opts? (That way only the regional programming gets the reduced bitrate when they run multiple video / audio streams but when the services are networked they all point to a single video/audio stream)
The German public service broadcasters do seem to be very well funded.
Looking at their transponder lists - they're packing a lot of services onto some transponders (particularly those that are DVB-S not S2). Do they do what, I believe, the Swedes do - which is PID switch during regional opts? (That way only the regional programming gets the reduced bitrate when they run multiple video / audio streams but when the services are networked they all point to a single video/audio stream)
Looking closer, it appears the transponders in question (101 and 111) are already used for WDR's regional variations in SD MPEG-2. That suggests they will use some sort of PID switching for the WDR HD channels. I don't know what solution they use at the moment, and am curious to find out what they do with the HD channels.
The German pubcasters are well funded and well liked. I'm quite impressed that they've committed to making all their TV channels available in HD within two years (I think ARD and ZDF operate 19 domestic TV channels together).
End of an era. I assume those are the last of the channels which were there when Sky analogue was broadcasting to close?
Analogue Astra was an active and widely used platform almost until the end. There were plenty of channel launches after 2001. In fact, many of the transponders vacated by Sky were soon taken over by new German analogue channels. The women's channel Sixx launched as late as last year in KIKA's downtime (KIKA is Germany's CBBC).
Are we going to have a magical light display, and a chance to win a television, from the satellite's position when the analogue signal is switched off? It will be the biggest switch off anywhere across Europe as it will affect more than the population of London!
Looking closer, it appears the transponders in question (101 and 111) are already used for WDR's regional variations in SD MPEG-2. That suggests they will use some sort of PID switching for the WDR HD channels. I don't know what solution they use at the moment, and am curious to find out what they do with the HD channels.
I found this page from WDR that provides some explanations, although I can't really decipher all of it. It seems people receiving regional variations of WDR can use that same parameters for both SD and HD programming, while those who want the "network" version (with local news for Cologne) have to tap in different frequencies for SD and HD.
That seems to suggest that both the SD and HD versions of all but the Cologne (aka Köln) regions are carried on the same transponder as each other. (6 on one, 4 on another)
Cologne appears to be split, with the HD version being carried on the transponder carrying 6 SD+HD regional feeds, the SD version being carried on a third transponder (presumably shared with non-WDR services?)
All three transponders are DVB-S not S2 according to that page.
Hmm - something odd here. I wonder if they are really HD during regional content - or are doing something like the following :
SD MPEG2 Network core feed and HD H264 Network core feed on continuously running at a decent bitrate - with all the regional SD and HD PIDS pointing at the SD and HD Network feeds during networked content?
When there are regional variations, the SD and HD PIDS of each SD and HD regional variation could then switch to one of 6 additional SD MPEG2 regional news streams? This would flash and bang a bit (I've noticed SVT DVB-S stuff isn't that nice on regional opts) - and would mean that viewer watching an 'HD' channel got SD news content?
Or are they really squeezing 7 x 720p H264 and 6 x 576i MPEG2 streams onto a single DVB-S transponder running at 38Mbs (101), and 4 x 720p H264 and 4 x 576i MPEG2 streams in a 33.8Mbs DVB-S transponder (101)?
Looking at what happens on 101 and 111 on Kingofsat seems to suggest that the regions are only on for 30 minutes a day? That makes me think they're PID switching. Might see what DVB Viewer says when they start if I can be watching 19.2 at the right time.
PAL analogue satellite was noticably worse than a decent terrestrial analogue off-air feed - particularly in noise terms (FM modulation, as used for analogue satellite, has a triangular noise spectrum which meant the chroma was often a lot noisier - as it was carried on a relatively high-frequency subcarrier in a PAL composite signal. And there were the dreaded sparklies as well) Of course some people had lousy terrestrial signals - so for them satellite often looked better...
On the other hand - analogue MAC satellite - which used baseband time-compression rather than a sub-carrier for the chroma - was a significant improvement over analogue terrestrial, and a lot better than a lot of the DVB compressed mush we now have (albeit MAC took a LOT more bandwith - as it took a whole transponder for a single channel)
A list of what the analogue transponders are used for at the moment, compiled from Lyngsat. Most of the channels switched off analogue on April 30, some had left by the end of last year (notably Viacom, Discovery and some shopping channels).
tp 49 was KIKA/Sixx Info card
tp 52 was QVC empty
tp 55 was N24 Info card
tp 61 was SWR RP Info card
tp 62 was HSE24 empty
tp 33 was ZDF Info card
tp 35 was Arte Info card
tp 36 was Phoenix Info card
tp 39 was WDR Info card
tp 40 was HR empty
tp 41 was BR-alpha Info card
tp 43 was MDR Info card
tp 45 was BR Info card
tp 48 was SWR BW Info card
tp 01 was RTL II Info card
tp 02 was RTL Info card
tp 03 was Channel 21 Various Austrian channels
tp 04 was Eurosport empty
tp 05 was VOX Info card
tp 06 was Sat1 Info card
tp 09 was Kabel 1 Info card
tp 10 was 3sat HD versions of 3sat, KIKA and ZDFinfo
tp 12 was DMAX Telefonica?
tp 13 was Super RTL Info card
tp 14 was Pro7 Info card
tp 15 was Nick/Comedy Various phone-in channels
tp 19 was Das Erste HD versions of Das Erste, Arte and SWR
tp 21 was Sport1 Various local channels
tp 23 was Tele 5 Info card
tp 25 was NDR HD versions of BR, NDR and Phoenix
tp 27 was Viva Various channels
tp 29 was n-tv HD version of Super RTL and the Austrian HD versions of RTL, Vox and RTL II
tp 30 was RBB Info card
Info card