Digital television in Finland

=Terrestrial=

Finland took digital television into use on August 27 in 2001. As of 2006, digital television broadcasts from the A and B multiplexes can be seen by 99.9% of the population and those from multiplex C by 78%. Remaining 0.1% of population mainly in Lapland will be covered by satellite broadcasts. In addition, many cable providers in the biggest cities provide television broadcasts, including pay TV, in digital form. Digital television broadcasts can be received according to the DVB-T, DVB-C, DVB-S, and DVB-H specifications. There are altogether 15 television and 4 radio channels at the moment. In addition to the current analogue channels: YLE's TV1 and TV2, MTV3, and Nelonen, YLE Extra (Entertainment), YLE Teema (culture, education, and science-related), Urheilukanava (sports), SubTV (mostly re-runs of old TV-series and movies), and SEXTV.FI (pornography) are broadcast in digital form. All channels except Canal+ Film1, Canal+ Film2, Canal+ Sport1 and Canal+ Sport2 are broadcast free of charge. Two new paytv channels started up in November 2006: MTV3 MAX (men's network) and SubTV Juniori (cartoons).

According to a survey by Finnpanel in June 2006, 50% of all households have digital television sets or set-top boxes. Almost half of the households have the ability to receive digital broadcasts.

Analogue terrestrial television was switched off in Finland on 1 September 2007. The newly available bandwidth was used to start broadcasting a fifth national multiplex.

http://www.digitv.fi/english For up-to-date information

Mobile TV

After test period during 2005-2006, commercial mobile paytv service based on DVB-H standard will start in the beginning of 2007; among the services available will be Voice TV and Kiss digital radio.

IPTV

Elisa is offering digital television on ADSL.

Cable

Analogue cable television were switched off in Finland on 1 March 2008. Finnish major cable operarors are DNA, Welho and TTV operating in Turku, Helsinki and Tampere areas. All paytv uses digital broadcasts, DVB-C set-top boxes have been available since 2001. Commercial HDTV-broadcasting has started even only small amount of program. Beyonwiz is making models of its popular HD PVR for Finnish market.

atellite

Digital satellite television started in Nordic countries, and also in Finland, by Multichoice Nordic pay-TV platform during 1996. First set-top boxes available were manufactured by Nokia and Pace. After that service merged with Canal Digital which started late 1997. Competing paytv Viasat and YLE's channel TV Finland started digital broadcasts 1999.

Canal Digital launched some HDTV-channels, like Discovery HD, on their digital paytv-package during 2006. Pan-European HDTV-channel Euro1080 HD1 is available also in Finland [http://www.hd-1.tv/]

External links

* [http://www.digitv.fi Digitv.fi - Development of digital tv in Finland]
* [http://www.digitv.fi/digiProEtusivu.asp?path=9;1826 digital teletext demos (English version)]