Finland’s leading TV channels are to delay the cessation of standard definition transmissions.
It follows a complaint to the country’s market court by the DTT, IPTV and cable distributor DNA over how public broadcaster YLE accounts for its distribution costs.
According to YLE 600,000 of Finland’s 1,250,000 TV households view terrestrial television signals. Of these some 68% have the ability to watch HD broadcasts.
The decision was welcomed by Pekka Väisänen, DNA’s senior vice president, consumer business. “The decision by domestic TV companies to move the schedule is a good solution for consumers. It makes sense to take account of current device ownership and provide households with additional time to upgrade their reception equipment.”
A 2016 agreement envisaged that the remaining DVB-T broadcasts would cease in March 2020 in favour of DVB-T2 and MPEG-4 compression. The process is complicated by DNA and its rival Digita operating DTT services in different frequency bands.
