The effects of Free satellite TV continues to spread over Europe with French free to air satellite provider TNTSat adding 4 new HD channels, announced this week, ready for delivery in February 2009.
TNTSat will add TF1, M6, Arte and France 2 in high definition and these will be encrypted so that the programming is not pirated using a special Sagem satellite tuner using Viaccess conditional access. Some existing set top devices, specifically the Sagem ISD91 HD, will be able to receive the new HD channels unchanged, and there are already 50,000 of these distributed in France.
Meanwhile Spain has decided that its own digital terrestrial television using DVB-T is just not doing the job, mostly due to interference from illegal TV stations. So the local Ministry of Information this week said it would use satellite distribution of the DTT service direct to households in Spain, and it will complete the migration by April 2010. Broadcasters are still haggling over who will pay the bill for this, the government or themselves, or the consumer but given that it is a provision in the original DTT license to reach 96% of the population they may be unlucky. However once they realize that they have receivers in place which will pick up free to air satellite signals, then this will give Spain the same outlet for HD TV services from free to air satellites as the UK, France, Italy and New Zealand, which are the only countries so far to have caught the bug.
Meanwhile in the UK, where the only thing holding back widespread uptake of the free to air Freesat services is the lack of a cheap player, Panasonic has added a two more Viera TVs which come with Freesat HD built-in, adding two models in the LZD81 series with 32-inches and 37-inches screen, available October.
So far Freesat has launched 130 digital TV and radio channels including HD programs from the BBC and ITV and says that it will have 200 by Christmas.
The proliferation of free to air satellite services in Europe, especially where they focus on quality HD channels, is likely to curtail the growth of Pay TV over the next few years.