The Radio och TV Verket (RTVV) has authorised seven high definition channels to broadcast on the Swedish terrestrial system. In all 11 new national channels have been licensed as well as a local channel.
The HD licences go to; Canal + HD Mix (C More Entertainment AB), Kanal 5 HD (SBS Broadcasting Networks Limited), MTVN HD (MTV Networks Europe), National Geographic Channel HD (NGC Europe Limited), TV3 HD (Viasat Broadcasting UK Limited), TV4 HD (TV4 AB) and Viasat Sport HD (Viasat Broadcasting UK Limited)
The four standard definition channels are; Canal + Series (C More Entertainment AB), Cartoon Network (Turner Entertainment Network International Limited), Eurosport 2 (Eurosport Société Anonyme) and Viasat Fotboll (Viasat Broadcasting UK Limited).
Local channel 24.UNT (Upsala Nya Tidning) completes the dozen.
The new licences will run from July 1, 2010 to March 31, 2014 and the first signals are expected to go live in the autumn.
All of the channels will broadcast using MPEG-4 and are expected to be a mix of free and pay.
The awards were welcomed by Crister Fritzson, president and CEO of transmission company Teracom: “With the channels that have today been authorised to broadcast Boxer will have the opportunity to offer a comprehensive range of HDTV channels,” he said.
Public broadcaster SVT has also been granted permission to run two additional channels in the HD format.
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