As of midnight Dutch time, whatever the hell that is, last night, analog television was discontinued in the Netherlands. The bandwidth formerly used by analog airwaves will now be put to use by Royal KPN NV for digital TV.
As part of its agreement, KPN shouldered the cost of building the digital infrastructure and it must continue to broadcast three state-supported channels and a bunch of regional public broadcasters free of charge. It’s arrangement is good until 2017.There will also be a pay service available for about $18.50 a month that is roughly equivalent to basic cable.
The Dutch are the first country to fully abandon analog TV, though it surely won’t be the last.
Dutch Pull Plug on Analog Television [ABC News]
Why must the USofA be so far behind. I blame capitalism.
Just FYI, Dutch time is Central European Time, and their midnight is at 3pm Pacific Standard Time or 6pm Eastern Standard Time. Everybody else in different time zones should be able to figure it out from here!
sweet. hopefully we will follow suit and one day offer a-la-carte channel pricing. One can dream, right?
~5% of Netherlands uses analog air reception through antennas. ~95% of the Netherlands has cable. The government only has released the bandwidth of the ~5% air reception.
This means that only people without cable (~5%) have to switch to digital air reception. The ~95% cable still remains an analog signal. Only a very small percentage of the people that have cable, has switched to set top boxes with a digital reception over cable. NL still is an analog country :(
Analogue television is being turned off in the UK too, between 2008 and 2012 the analogue signal will be turned off region by region. In an interesting twist to make Scotland feel vaguely a part of the UK they are turning off the Scottish borders region first, moving steadily south up until 2012.
In the UK everyone has access to digital television called Freeview through their normal TV aerial, according to the government website designed to inform the helpless public about what a digital TV is, it states that “Digital switchover will also help the UK continue as a world leader in broadcasting. It will ensure that today’s ageing terrestrial broadcasting network is replaced by the best available technology, digital.”
We can’t be that much of a world leader… the Netherlands just beat us too it!