Chris Dziadul looks at HD developments in Estonia.
Estonia’s well-earned reputation for being at the forefront of developments in the new television marketplace has been reinforced by the news it is to trial a HD over DTT service.
While most of Central and Eastern Europe is still dillying and dallying over the rollout of DTT operations – several countries have been undertaking tests for a number of years but not taken the next logical step – Estonia grabbed the bull by the horns at the end of 2006 by launching what is probably the region’s most advance digital terrestrial TV service.
Operated as a partnership between the TDF-backed national transmission company Levira and leading cable operator Starman, the service currently consists of 20 SD channels, most of which are pay and offered in a package known as Zuum TV. The public broadcaster ETV joined the DTT platform in April and it is expected the HD trial will start in the capital, Tallinn, and Valgjärve in the south of the country, in August. Lasting up to six months, it will employ MPEG-4 AVC encoding to distribute what will probably be two FTA and one encrypted channels.
Although Sweden has a HD over DTT service up and running and trials are planned for Norway and France, this will be the first time such a test is undertaken in Central and Eastern Europe. Given developments in other areas of its TV industry, it is perhaps no surprise that they will be in Estonia.
Digital TV services, though still relatively new, are growing rapidly. Aside from the DTT operation, Starman operates a digital cable service, consisting of 77 channels, in Tallinn, Rapla and Harju country. The telco Elion meanwhile operates both a digital cable and IPTV service, the latter claiming 33,000 subscribers and having only last month introduced VOD, and MTG’s Viasat provides a digital satellite service.
By now starting a HD over DTT trial, Estonia will keep the momentum going and at the same time set an example for the rest of the region.
