Canal Satellite Numérique will offer three more HD channels during 2008. The news was broken during a special online chat session on the TPS website with Thierry Chamouton (director client relations at CanalSat) and Amaury Lelong (director of the TPS/CanalSat migration project). The online session with subscribers was intended to give more information about the migration process of TPS subscribers, who now watch Hot Bird, to CanalSat, which uses Astra.
TPS subscribers will lose a number of channels after shut down of the Hot Bird platform, including the M6 music channels Rock and Pop, Baby TV, the travel channel Odyssée and probably Fun TV. The Meteo Express interactive weather forecasts will also not be available. The reason is the lack of transponder capacity on the 19 degrees East Astra position.
TPS subscribers have also learned that subscriptions outside of France will not be allowed and that smart card only subscribers and SMATV homes will migrate during Q2 2008.