The Netherlands now has three major forms of broadcast digital television. Terrestrial (DVB-T/DVB-H), Cable (DVB-C), and Satellite (DVB-S). In addition IPTV services are available. At the end of the third quarter of 2008 over 50% of the households in the Netherlands had some form of digital television.[1]
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The Netherlands was the second European country to complete the move to digital terrestrial broadcasting on December 11, 2006. The switch-off was helped greatly by the fact that about 90% of the households have cable that continues to use analog distribution. Due to the very extensive penetration of cable systems, usage of terrestrial television in the Netherlands is largely confined to remote rural areas and for portable televisions in caravans, etc.
Since then all terrestrial television broadcast in the Netherlands are digital. The national public television channels Nederland 1, Nederland 2, Nederland 3 and the regional public television channels are made available free-to-air.
DVB-T transmissions in the Netherlands are provided commercially by KPN daughter company Digitenne. They offer 25 TV channels and 16 radio channels, including the free-to-air channels. The Digitenne system requires the use of a special powered aerial. The Digitenne service uses Conax encryption.
KPN launched a DVB-H service MobileTV on Thursday, June 5, 2008 with a bouquet of ten channels. The ten channels are Nederland 1, Nederland 3, RTL 4, RTL 24, SBS 6, Jetix/Veronica, MTV, Discovery Channel, Xite and Nick Toons. RTL24 is a made-for-mobile channel with news and current affair. Xite is a new Dutch music channel.[2] In November 2008, a new dedicated mobile TV channel was added. Nu.tv from Ilse Media and the nu.nl news web site.
Over 90% of the households in the Netherlands receive their television signal by cable, making it one of the highest cable penetrated countries. Most cable viewers still watch analogue because no set-top box is necessary. But with the uptake of LCD and plasma televisions customers are looking for better picture quality in digital cable. In addition digital cable offers hundreds of channels compared to the about thirty channels analogue cable offers.
All the major cable companies in the Netherlands offer a digital service. The different cable companies all use the European DVB-C standard for their digital signal but use different encryption techniques and don't support devices with a Common Interface restricting costumers to buy or rent certified set-top-boxes or IDTVs. All cable companies offer a number of high-definition channels. At the moment, UPC uses Nagravision encryption, whilst the others all use Irdeto 2,
The four largest cable companies in the Netherlands are:
Digital satellite television in the Netherlands is available via CanalDigitaal, using the SES Astra's satellites at 19.2° east and 23.5° east. Services from both satellite positions can be received using a single dish with a Duo LNB, specifically designed for this purpose.
It is only possible to register as a customer of CanalDigitaal using a Dutch postal address, due to copyright restrictions. A standard DVB-S receiver is used, which can also receive other free-to-air broadcasts. CanalDigitaal uses MediaGuard and Irdeto 2 encryption.
Since May 1, 2006 KPN offers Mine TV, an IPTV service based on their DSL service, with the ability to receive Video on demand and replay a missed TV episodes besides regular TV programming. During 2007, the KPN service was renamed KPN Interactieve TV.
Tele2 also offers an IPTV service called Tele2Vision. Since mid 2008 XMSNET also has started the rollout of IPTV over their FTTH (Fiber To The Home) network in several cities in the Netherlands.
In the Netherlands customers can receive high-definition television channels by cable or satellite. There is no terrestrial HD service available nor planned. The first trials with high-definition television in the Netherlands began in 2006 with the broadcast of the 2006 World Cup in HD. After the trial the larger cable companies continued a HD service with a small number of channels as Discovery HD and National Geographic Channel HD. But because no Dutch network had made the move to HD, already broadcasted in widescreen and the quality of the standard-definition PAL signal was good enough for most people, demand was low.
Since the 2006 trials none of the main Dutch networks made the move to HD. This changed in the summer of 2008 when from June 1, 2008 until August 24, 2008 the Netherlands Public Broadcasting (NPO) organisations made their primary channel, Nederland 1 temporary available in HD. This made it possible to broadcast Euro 2008, the 2008 Tour de France, and the 2008 Summer Olympics in HD and additionally allowed them to test their systems before the scheduled launch of their permanent HD service on 4 July 2009.[3] The NPO planned to launch their permanent HD service with HD versions of their three channels Nederland 1, Nederland 2, and Nederland 3. Most of the programming in the early stages will consists of upscaled material from their parent channels as in time more programs will become available in HD.[4] Technicolor Netherlands, the company responsible for the technical realisation of the broadcasts of the NPOs television and radio channels, began the summer 2008 test broadcast of Nederland 1 HD in 720p/50 as the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) recommends. During the test period an additional 1080i/25 version of the channel was made available to the cable companies because of quality complaints from viewers, this will also be the format of the permanent service.[5]
The commercial broadcasting organizations in the Netherlands RTL Nederland (RTL 4, RTL 5, RTL 7, RTL 8) and the SBS Broadcasting Group (NET 5, SBS 6, Veronica) have made no concrete HD plans available but said that HD will be part of their "regular replacement investments".[4]
Currently there are still a limited number of HD channels available in the Netherlands, most of them are general HD channels without any Dutch programming.
Satellite viewers can receive a number of additional HD channels from the surrounding countries when broadcasting free-to-air including BBC HD, the franco-german cultural channel Arte and the German Anixe HD. But these channels are not part of HD services offered in the Netherlands nor broadcast programming aimed at the Dutch market.
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