Dutch ready to kill analog TV, zeros and ones rejoice!

The Dutch have Haarlem and we've got Harlem; they have Amsterdam and we've got New Amsterdam New York City; they've got 100% terrestrial digital television broadcasts and we've got, we've got, er, hmm. That's right, this weekend The Netherlands is throwing the big red digital switch putting an end to the terrestrial analog television transmissions blanketing the country since 1951. That makes them the world's first and opens up those old frequencies for say, mobile digital TV, Mobile WiMax or enhanced emergency services. The 74,000 or so households still receiving analog broadcasts can purchase DVB-T set top boxes at an expense of between €40 and €80. Even then, users will only have access to a few public broadcasting channels without some type of paid subscription. So when is the US making the cutover? 2009. Yeah, we know.

[Thanks, Wouter]

Read -- Nu.nl (Dutch)

[onkl @ Dec 6th 2006 9:28AM]

Well, 100% is somewhat overstated. I'm not certain about the international situation, but about 99% of the Dutch have a connection to the local cable system, which will continue analog broadcast until infinity or the apocalypse (whichever comes first).
This is only concerning ether/air transmissions, which won't affect a lot of people. (real countryside is nearly extinct over here)

By the way, concerning New York/Amsterdam, please do consider yourself warned: http://www.giveusbacknewyork.com/
:)

[xman @ Dec 6th 2006 9:40AM]

What are you talking about? Cable TV does not broadcast over the air. They broadcast through cable wires and thus the term cable TV. So thanks for your 2cents, but it has nothing to do with broadcasting (over the air) digitally vs. analog.

[onkl @ Dec 6th 2006 10:29AM]

I'm quite aware of the differences between cables and air, I merely tried to state that the relevance of over the air broadcasting in the Netherlands is smaal. For example, only the three public TV stations could be received via analog ether signal, all commercial/foreign stations were only available by satellite or via your cable network. The main group affected here are those who dumped their 20 years old TV in their motorhome during hollidays.

[chris @ Dec 11th 2006 6:29AM]

xman you retard. you're the one who didn't understand lol!
man... take a step back before you comment.

[.M. @ Dec 6th 2006 9:56AM]

Onkl has a good point. The number of cable subscribers used to be around 95% of the Dutch. But that number is steadely going down the recent period to around 80% at the moment in areas where DVB-T has a 25 channel pack available (KPN-Digitenne) with cheap exclusive footbal and even including a 24/7 porn channel without extra subscription costs.

By the way, about 1 milion housholds have a DVB-C decoder (digital cable tv)

Also the number of people watching digital tv via satellite ( DVB-S) is steadely rising in The Netherlands. (Another estimated 1 million orso already)

In short: The dutch monopoly of the cable companies seems to be a thing of the past.

[niels @ Dec 6th 2006 10:39AM]

xman he means that almost nobody in the netherlands is using the analog antenna to receive TV signals. nearly everybody has a cable connection in their house. so when the government pulls the plug on analog antenna TV reception, it really doesnt affect anybody...

[luke @ Dec 6th 2006 10:31AM]

just as an addition to .M.'s post, and to put the numbers he mentioned in perspective. The Netherlands has a population of about 16 million people.

[meh @ Dec 6th 2006 10:29AM]

This article makes it sound like Holland is some sort of valhalla of tv. Which is categorically untrue. The switch mentioned in the article only relates to terrestrial signals. (analog cabled signals are still available in 100% of Holland - and will be for a very very long time) The terrestrial signals are of very low quality and are very limited in channels (both in analog and digital) and therefore are used by very few people (only 74.000 people according to the article).

Most people use cabled TV which lags behind other normal western countries by about 10 years. Yea, we're still waiting for dutch channels to make the switch to widescreen, its that pathetic. Digital (cabled) signals are being more widespread but are usually of appalling quality.

Not that it really matters as dutch original tv content is either lame or straight out retarded (we 'invented' big brother - enough said). Imported content from abroad is cut up to fit the 'standard 4:3' aspect ratio (cropped or pan&scan), fitted with some overly big mistranslated subtitles and some big permanent logo's and then treated to some mistimed and overlong commercial breaks. If a channel accidentally broadcasts widescreen content, they don't use a proper widescreen signal but just send a letterboxed 4:3 signal, forcing you to use your tv to compensate.

HDTV is a term used like its spacetravel to another galaxy: something for the far far future.

I usually just ignore dutch tv except for the news and maybe discovery channel (which btw also crops ws content). I guess i'm lucky these channels are in color AND stereo!

[Unomi @ Dec 6th 2006 10:37AM]

Markets are merging in the Netherlands. Noticable by seeing cable companies offering telephone/internet. Telephone companies offering television/internet. And internet companies offering television/telephone.

Also in some shops thing merge. Gardenmarkets selling TV's, groceries selling insurance. Drugstores selling laptops/gadgets. Supermarkets selling everything.

I think kids in school don't learn businessmodels anymore. They learn people targeting. Individualised segmentation. Clash of the classes has begun, but it is all fague.

Has nothing to do with the Dutch putting an end to analog TV, but about digitalisation and shifting markets by huge companies. As soon as beer companies start selling diapers, I'm lost.... Eh, they do already. Aaaaaaaaaagh....

- Unomi -

[Bas @ Dec 6th 2006 10:42AM]

This is a good example of 'lost in translation'. The Dutch keep their analogue TV-signals, so no news here. The majority of the Dutch still isn't all that interested in digital broadcasts (cable/air/sattelite). Only news is that broadcasts over the air will be shut down. And like Onkl already wrote, there were only three stations left that could be received over the air. So again, this information is not that interesting.

[Thomas Ricker @ Dec 6th 2006 10:58AM]

Bas, true what you say. But while the impact in The Netherlands is minimal, it is of *great* interest to the rest of the world to see a country shut down the old analog television spectrum to make way for reallocation. Most countries continue to hem and haw about the difficulties in switching from analog to digital broadcasts. Having a concrete example of a working model makes a big difference. Come on, this is just another case where things that are "normal" to the rational Dutch society (I live in Amsterdam by the way) are viewed as amazing and novel by the rest of the world -- legalized same sex marriage, soft drugs, euthanasia, and now, the end of terrestrial analog broadcasts.

Thomas

[Matias Korhonen @ Dec 6th 2006 11:11AM]

I believe that Finland will become the first country with ALL digital TV broadcasts (excluding some international analogue satellite channels) when it throws the switch on 31.8.2007. You can actually see a counter in the top corner of http://www.canaldigital.fi/ or at http://www.digitv.fi/default.asp?path=9

The second link is in english...

[VideoFlying @ Dec 6th 2006 11:19AM]

"o when is the US making the cutover? 2009. Yeah, we know."
Yeah, but it's a little bit easier and cheaper to cover a whole small 500 inhabitants/km� country than a very large 30 inhabtitants/km� one :)