Germany's RTL pulls free-to-air channels off terrestrial TV
Germany's largest commercial broadcaster is getting out of broadcasting, on Earth at least, citing spiralling costs and an uncertain future as mobile phone operators grab all the good spectrum. Broadcasting on Germany's terrestrial platform apparently costs "many times" what satellite transmissions do, and with satellite and …
This topic is closed for new posts.
Re: Small problem with satellite
Freeview is available over much of Ireland as well. I'd heard that unavailablity of some Freeview channels on Freesat was more a matter of thrashing out commercial disputes than directly about licensing and overspill.
Irish TV on satellite has chosen to address the issue of licensed material by adopting Ka-band transmissions rather than K-band, because the higher frequencies can be focussed into a tighter beam, covering Ireland only.
Unfortunately, this means buying a new (less-common, therefore expensive) LNB and installing a new cable for it.
(I'm in Northern Ireland. I can receive Irish DVB-T both on the local Freeview broadcast and directly from across the border. I get RTL from satellite!)
It's not over until the fat lady sings
Here in Germany TV is extremely political. The private companies have always moaned about how much they have to pay to be received on anything but satellite but in the end they have gone along with all the requirements. Licences are awarded on a per state basis, so in order to be able to broadcast in Bavaria, RTL had to set up the headquarters of one of its channels in Munich. If it looks like the costs for DVB-T are going to be borne by the public channels I can see the commercials being forced to pay whether they're on board or not - there is a similar argument going on about cable at the moment. Not that the commercial channels will be much of a loss anyway as they are really crap. German TV is, in general dire, with the most common refrain of my demographic being "oh, there's usually something good on ARTE…". Think of Channel 5 on a bad day and then roll it in shit and leave it to fester for a couple of years. The private channels here are suffering long term from being spectacularly uninventive and largely indistinguishable.
If they do get dropped from DVB-T it might leave room for some more interesting channels such as the Dutch and Belgian public broadcasters - even public access would be better than the commercial channels! Or HD. I've no idea why there are so few channels here on DVB-T and none in HD.
Re: It's not over until the fat lady sings
I agree Charlie, thats why i like Freesat.
Sadly there appears to be a few BBC or ITV employees on this forum that want to down vote the facts.
Fact is, Astra 2e will be deliberately tightly focused on the UK, much tighter than 2d is now, under the ploy that it will provide a stronger signal to the north of the UK.
It seems likely that in Bavaria, a dish size of 2.5 metres or more will be required where as 1.5 metres is enough at the minute.
1.5 metres is "reasonable" in my opinion.
There is more to this than meets the eye.
I can see that coming in Canada too
Cable, satellite, cell phones, internet are largely owned by the same companies in each region (Bell, Rogers, Tellus). So for them Free TV = Bad. Better to use the bandwidth for cell phones and force everyone onto cable or satellite where they can also have the chance to charge them for pay per view and sign them up for extra subscription movie/ sports channels. There will be no local TV, just network TV running out of the big city centres.
Oddly enough
DTT isn't that popular in Germany, particularly Munich.
The reason for this is many modern blocks of flats were built with cable infrastructure in place and cable fees are built into the rent to get discounted rates.
In such cases who isn't going to use it and restrict themselves to the free DTT channels?
memories of when I had Sky
and the flicking through the German channels to see if there was anything on, and then generally wasn't.
There was the slight amusement of foreign adverts, the consternation at the choice of voices used for dubbing US shows such as Hill Street Blues, and the occasional flash of tits late on a Friday night.
Satellite or Cable?
Death of portable / transportable / ad hoc TV reception.
Outside Cities and major towns is rarely cabled
Satellite is precarious.
Why are they allowed to do this?
Re: Satellite or Cable?
"Satellite is precarious."
Is it really any more precarious than terrestrial TV?
Re: Satellite or Cable?
I suspect that what Mage is getting at is that it is a sight easier to get to a terrestrial transmitter in case of breakage than it is to get to a satellite.
Makes sense. Pretty inefficient that a one-to-many broadcast like television should go around hogging valuable swarths of wireless spectrum that could be better used to provide interactive one-to-one links. Satellite and cable broadcasting makes much more sense for a medium like television. Fair play to the Germans for noticing and rooting out this inefficiency.
This what happens when Corporations own public infrastructure.
We need to globally make all TV to be broadcast over satellite, all Internet & Telephone over Cable/Fiber, leave Radio the hell alone and mandate everyone uses the same standards so people can buy and own their receiving equipment and pay for the services/channels they choose to receive ala cart.
Then each CHANNEL or SERVICE becomes it own profit center and they each pay to defray the cost of shared public infrastructure as well as the consumer.
The beauty of such a system is that truly crap TV channels would soon be dropped. You would have to keep so called "public channels" for information applications but quality of content and the customer will then dictate which channels and shows remain in the lineup by "free market" consumerism.
We call that TV corp "Asocial TV"
Other names are "Unemployment TV" or "Hartz 4 TV" (after unemployment legislation forcing people into poverty).
Those channels exist purely because people love to see that there's always someone at least a thousand times more stupid and asocial than themselves.
All things considered, it's rather a gain to the spectrum.
DTT has about 5% of market in Germany
Compared with almost 50% (counting second TVs) in the UK. Germans nearly all use cable or satellite. In many homes basic cable is included with the rent. Analogue was the same way. Belgium and the Netherlands also have very little terrestrial use although there is some.
I don't think that there is really any useful precedent for the UK in this. The closest equivalent would be if ITV removed themselves from Freesat with it's about 1M homes and went Sky, Freeview and Virgin only except RTL's cost saving is probably larger than ITVs would be (if you don't count any bonus from Sky paying them not to be on Freesat). It isn't like removing themselves from Freeview which is main TV service for about 10M homes and used as a secondary service in another few million.
[All numbers all approximate as knowing them is no longer important to my job. Ofcom market surveys are very useful for the UK, I don't know of any freely available data for Germany but it may exist.]
Spectrum used by mobile
I always find it interesting that mobile companies claim to need more spectrum. They already got plenty now. They have at least this here in Europe. I am not sure about this status in other parts of the world.
450Mhz (CDMA2000)
800Mhz (LTE)
850Mhz - Not used in Europe for mobile.
900Mhz (3G/GSM/LTE)
1700Mhz - Not used in Europe for mobile.
1800Mhz (GSM/LTE)
1900Mhz (3G) - Limited usage in Europe.
2100Mhz (3G)
2600Mhz (LTE)
I do not understand why they need more spectrum. They got a lot already to work with. What they need to start doing is to remove old service like GSM (2G) that is mostly just voice and not data.
There is future for DVB-T/T2. As many people do not want cable tv, satellite tv. They just want to use normal antenna to get the needed tv signal. Many people do have internet. But the tv service costs extra (as always). Cable costs extra. Getting a signal over antenna does not cost extra. Unless it is encrypted. But encrypted signals can be ignored.
As for me. I am going to cancel my yousee.dk subscription. I am going to focus more on buying dvd and blu-ray disks in the future. It is better and I am free of the tv ads that cut the shows when on the tv channels. I am going to setup an antenna out in my garden. Where I can get DR1/2/3 for free. Along with few german channels that I get. As I am living just about 960 meters (where it is shortest distance) away from the Denmark/German border.
A schedule is something to build around.
A nominal time allows people to make decisions and gives advertisers a nominal demographic that they are looking for.
Otherwise how would find what shows you want to watch?
Choose a channel? They don't exist anymore.
Choose a time? But that's become irrelevant.
And have it delivered by a cable dedicated to doing this . WTF?
There's a reason that telephones were not developed as radio systems and television was not first delivered to subscribers by land lines.
One works better point to point, one works better 1 to many. While people's use of telephone services has changed to take advantage of mobile services has television use really changed that much to justify that bandwidth?
RTL is on DVB-T?
Not where I live (near Stuttgart). Has never been.
The Germans can always be relied upon...
...to come up with the wrong answer, having exhausted all of the better alternatives,
This topic is closed for new posts.
