Oplesch to enter German digital TV
Premiere, DF1 to receive competition from @TV
Oplesch has applied for permission for 10 pay TV channels on health, travel, leisure, erotica, indie movies, music, comedy, sports and children's programming as well as a lifestyle channel focusing on home issues that would be the first of its kind in Germany.
Premiere, Kirch in control
At present, the pay TV channel Premiere and Kirch's digital pay TV channel DF1 are in firm control of the market with around 800,000 subscribers between them; and plans to merge are under way.
Other digital TV activities are few and far between.
Cable gatekeeper Deutsche Telekom (DT) runs a digital bouquet of foreign-language channels. The public broadcasters ARD and ZDF run their own free TV digital bouquets, ARD Digital and ZDF Vision, respectively.
Also, the process of transferring from analog to digital transmission picked up speed Wednesday with news channel n-TV and DT embarking on the capital's first transmission of a channel on digital terrestrial TV, DVB-T.
'Into the future'
"This decision has paved the way for the trial of technical developments leading the way into the future," said Andreas Weiss, head of n-TV's technical department, which is responsible for the transmission of the channel.
"Digital TV via antenna allows viewers to watch TV everywhere, even in the car or on the train."
At this year's Intl. Broadcasting Fair in Berlin, DT is planning to present a DVB-T packet that will allow viewers more possibilities, such as the combination of television and Internet pages. A decoder would be required to receive the channels.
