Originally Posted by Night Watchman:
“All German analogue channels will be switched off end of April 2012 but these transponders wont stay unused for long - ARD and ZDF have already announced the launch of 10 new HD channels from May 1 2012 in addition to the current ARD HD and ZDF HD - ZDFneo HD, ZDFkultur HD, ZDFinfo HD, Kika HD, 3Sat HD, WDR HD, NDR HD, BR HD, SWR HD and Phoenix HD. All fta. 3 German shopping channels (including QVC) also launched HD versions on September 1.”
I know nothing about the plans for German DSO - whether or not it just refers to terrestrial TV or both Terrestrial and Satellite, but you have to remember that one analogue TV channel uses "shed loads" (that's a technical term) of bandwidth, PAL video signal alone is about 5-6MHz bandiwdth, with 5MHz audio bandwidth - plus clear white space separation between these channels, so one transponder per analogue TV channel.
Depending whether or not they use DVB-S or DVB-S2 or whether it's MPEG-2 or H.264/MPEG-4-AVC they can carry at least 3 HD channels in the same space, or more than 10 SD channels (if they average at 3.3(ish) Mbps), or a combination of the two - possibly more as better encoders are developed.
So,10 new HD services might sound like a lot, but it's peanuts compared to analogue TV.
Originally Posted by ProDave:
“They surely can't be waiting for the vacated analogue transponders? That will be going some to switch off the analogue transponders, and have several HD digital transponders up and running the very next day.”
I'm not saying this is the plan, but I don't see why not. We talk about digital and analogue as if the delivery method is different. However, for digital TV, we still have to use a carrier. It's not like the transponders themselves care.