The Czech national transmission company CRa has suspended the transition to DVB-T2 until the end of March.
Commenting on the move, made in the light of the coronavirus crisis, the company’s CEO Vit Vazan said: “We want to save at least the need for people who have a lot of worries about the current difficult situation. Television is now the primary channel of real-time information transmission, terrestrial broadcasting is, unlike all other platforms, obliged to ensure broadcasting to as many people as possible, and we will not complicate this situation by the need to retune. People must think primarily about protecting their health.
“We are therefore canceling all deadlines for shutting down existing broadcasts until the end of March. We are discussing new data with the CTU and the MIT, it is also a question of international frequency coordination. Once we have fine-tuned the schedule, we will immediately inform about it”.
Three in five (60%) households in the Czech Republic still use terrestrial broadcasting, which covers more than 99% of the population.
Furthermore, terrestrial TV services are the only free ones to receive.
