http://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/ Engadget HD Comments for When will HDTV arrive in Europe? http://hd.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://hd.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2009 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/http://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/
P.S. If you can't tell, I'm from the UK.]]>Jul 26th 2006 1:58PMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/http://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/Jul 26th 2006 2:02PMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/http://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/Jul 26th 2006 2:09PMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/http://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/
The Spanish are too busy having their siestas, the Italians are too busy sitting in cafes, the Germans are still clearing up the empty beer bottles from the World Cup and, well...the French are probably on strike about something...]]>Jul 26th 2006 2:20PMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/http://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/Jul 26th 2006 2:31PMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/http://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/
I'm one of your European readers and live in the Netherlands ;-)

I own a Toshiba 37WL58P (HDTV-ready). The reason i don't use HDTV is very simple. The Dutch-broadcasters have made a mess and it just doesn't work properly at the moment. Just before the WK (worldcup) the broadcasters started big compaigns for promoting HDTV. The few people that were willing to spend 300 euro's for a Samsung-setupbox were very dissappointed because the quality sucked and the HDMI-port just didn't work properly. Because these broadcasters make their own standards, the Samsung-box is the only choice at the moment.

A large broadcaster (UPC) has even currently stopped taking new customers for HDTV because of all the problems they're having.

]]>Jul 26th 2006 3:50PMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/http://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/Jul 26th 2006 4:22PMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/http://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/
BTW, Italy has good food? I couldn't find any. At least I can find good stuff to chow down in Spain, France, Greece and Germany. Of course, Europe's food is downright pathetic compared to Asian cuisine: thai, vietnamese, chinese, korean, india, burmese, pakistani, afghani, japanese. Thank God for Asian food...curries, spices, sushi, BBQ...yummy.

]]>Jul 26th 2006 4:49PMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/http://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/http://www.ebu.ch/ to recommend what standard to use for production.

I live in denmark, and the only "choise" I have if I wanted hd, is to put up a sattelite dish and use the distributor canal digital, or if I live where it is possible to get the cable provider tdc kabeltv (and they only just resently introduced hd with the world cup), and another problem is that as far as i know there is only one channel that dilivers hd called C-More.

And the main reason why i think people are not buying, is that there is no local programs from any of the danish tv stations, and I think this is a common problem in all countries speaking an other language than english.]]>Jul 26th 2006 5:11PMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/http://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/1) it was only released in May with a very expensive box and subscription increase (meaning a LOT of people paying over £50 a month which is around $90-100US)
2) the box is still very "buggy" and wasn't really tested very well, recordings get lost, the box freezes and turns off quite often
3) There's a huge demand for boxes but not enough around so there's a large waiting time for installation
4) I think this is the main point: Content!
while the US has plenty of channels in HD, the BBC don't have any "main" channels in HD (channels 1-5) and all the shows imported from the US are spread over 10 smaller channels over here, some of which don't even broadcast in widescreen, let alone HD (we've had widescreen digital TV since the late 90's)

The original story says "Surely having pubs, sporting arenas, and friends' homes to watch the small amount of HDTV on will help spur growth as it has in other countries"
There's around 30 pubs in the whole country with HDTV (there's about that many pubs just in my village), I know of no sporting arena's that show HD on their TV's, myself and my brother have HDTV in our homes but there's so little content that there's nothing to show people, it's not like there's ANY prime time shows on, just movies and sport

@ poster #1, why do you think we're not part of Europe?
if it's the figures, then remember there's a lot less than 100,000 HDTV viewers in the UK alone.]]>Jul 27th 2006 3:57AMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/http://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/Jul 27th 2006 4:30AMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/http://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/
http://www.sateliteinfos.com/actu/tema.asp/q/hdtv

It is a shame that they did not offer it on time for the WorldCup.

Here the level of information is quite poor, and many stores are offering TV sets "HD ready" with misleading information (as if we were going to see better the SD channels).

Concerning the stereotypes...here is Spain we are not haveing "siesta" everytime (neither we are bullfighters), in Italy food is as good as in many other South Europe countries (just go to Sicily), and the UK is Europe (why not?)...]]>Jul 27th 2006 4:42AMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/http://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/In the netherlands it's simple. there's no money. 16 million people live here, of which 4.5 million watch TV. The max number of viewers for a mega hyper super cool program is about 3 million. So where are the broadcasters getting there money from? It's way too expensive for them to invest money in something they'll never make profit from.

Bass
]]>Jul 27th 2006 5:47AMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/http://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/that's why we need pan-european channels like we used to have with MTV Europe before it split into regions

bring back Ray Cokes!

but I agree, it's stupid putting all of Europe together in a story like this, it's not like they do stories about "America" (the continent, not the US) and put themselves in the same league as Brasil, Mexico etc]]>Jul 27th 2006 6:24AMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/http://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/
Ray cokes for president! I totally agree that we need some good pan-european channels. eurosport is IMHO a bit of a sad story not being able to broadcast any sports that matters. Formula1? nope. WorldCup? nope. reruns of matches everyone has seen live? yep.
MTV europe was a good thing, and I believe that National Geographic is getting really HD right now.

About your 'America as a continent' remark: Strong.

-Bass]]>Jul 27th 2006 10:32AMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/http://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/So the reason, i believe that there isn't a bigger uptake, is because it's not being pushed hard enough! and we don't have enough content.
Ireland has the second highest console penetration after Japan, and one of the highest, if not the highest, cinema viewerships in the world, and even, to my knowledge, every Cinema in ireland is kitted out with Digital Equipment (projectors etc... it was done by some company a year or two ago!) but they are not being use used because there is no distribution for them. Ireland is Particularly behind the times when i comes to TV (we're quiet ahead in most other areas, Mobile/Cell phones, Consoles, etc) and even Broadband, and this is generally because there are alot of monopolies here, and the government is to lazy and useless to do anything about it. For example, The national broadcaster (RTE) only switched to Widescreen about 12months ago, and even at that, it's not done it properly!.. and don't even get me started on Broadband, that's just a joke!
I feel that if the proper action was taken and it was pushed with the proper content and enough of it, then take-up would be a given!!

anyways, that's my 2 cents on the matter. as you can tell, i'm just frustrated over the whole thing, as from living in NY on and off over the past year, HD content can't be beaten, it's just great!]]>Jul 27th 2006 11:57AMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/http://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/Jul 27th 2006 7:05PMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/http://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/
...and for all the UK guys reading here: You guys are so nice to hear, man. How in the whole world can you guys think you`re on the top? About two month the UK was way back in HD on the other side of the world. Just now launching the Sky services you guys are in the glory? ;)

France, Italy, Germany etc. .....all have HD up for almost a half year and running stable. They show Lost, Deadwood, Into the west etc. all in HD. Some countries do have free to air channels like Germany and those channels running movies in HD during the week and beiside all the Pay TV HD services.

How fast was the U.S into HD? How much content we got here as HD started? You still see how hard it is to get a new HD channel to Cableco or Satellite services such as Dish Network or Directv. Remember if all these companies were so nice to HD. I don`t see the point for us americans to pick on the europeans here.

They will have HD-DVD and blu-ray in the next two or three month, so they arent much behind us. They all started their services in H.264 way before some locals here aired their program in H.264.

HD001

]]>Jul 31st 2006 2:52PMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/http://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/26/when-will-hdtv-arrive-in-europe/Nevertheless, HD IS taking off in Europe with all big satellite packages now providing HD channels. Limited, but they are there. In scandinavia there is CMORE-HD, in Germany Premiere HD, in the UK there is SKY-HD, in France TPS-HD and Italy has SKY Italia HD.
The offering is limited, but content is slowly but surely being provided mainly over sattelite.
What strikes me is that the big retailer outlets don't push HD as they could and that you hardly find any store runnig demo's.... I really don't know why! Europe is slowly realizing HD is the next big thing, but as we are 25 different couontries, it will take time to become BIG!!!]]>Aug 8th 2006 10:20AM