Last Thursday the German pay TV operator easy.tv terminated their broadcasts over the Astra satellite at 19.2 degrees East. The bouquet was owned by PrimaCom and offered a number of channels including Extreme Sports, AXN, Silverline (movies) and National Geographic as well as adult entertainment. The channels were available with prepaid cards using the satellite infrastructure of ORS.
The service was launched in Austria one year ago and Germany followed a few months later. The company claimed 650,000 Cryptoworks smart cards were distributed in Austria and some 400,000 on the German market. The cards could be upgraded by calling a premium phone line or over the Internet. PrimaCom decided to end the easy.tv services “on econmic grounds.”