There is nothing quite like a major sporting event to boost the uptake of advanced TV services.
The Beijing Olympics are seen as an ideal opportunity to introduce HD to a wider audience in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), and at least three public broadcasters will be providing programming in the format for the first time during the games.
In Slovakia, the long awaited launch of STV3, otherwise known as ‘Trojka’, is/was expected to take place on August 8. A sports channel offering coverage of the Olympics in HD, it has already secured distribution on UPC’s digital package, as well its analogue cable service in 32 cities. It will also be carried by a DTT trial service being operated by Towercom in Bratislava and Banska Bystrica-Zvolen.
Not everyone will, of course, watch Trojka in HD, and the channel is expected to switch to a near-total or complete SD format after the Games. However, the cat will by then be out of the bag, so to speak, with Slovakia having taken the first steps to introduce HD to a mass audience.
Meanwhile in neighbouring Poland, the public broadcaster has just launched TVP HD. It will offer 18 hours of Olympic coverage each day, and following the Games revert to a general HD channel with a strong slant towards sports programming.
TVP HD has already secured distribution on the DTH platform n and Aster’s cable network. It will also be available to viewers within the coverage areas of MPEG-4 DTT trials in (amongst others) Warsaw, Kraków and Poznan.
In Hungary, Magyar Televizió (MTV) is set to introduce HD programming on both its channels during the Games. HD content will continue to appear once they are over, and it expects to be producing all its programming in the format by the middle of next year.
Although HD channels are already widely available in CEE, the fact that three of the region’s leading public broadcasters have now decided to start carrying their own HD programming is significant. It marks another important milestone in the transition to an all-HD broadcasting environment, which is likely to be completed much sooner than many people believe.
