Digital terrestrial television in Finland

Last updated

Digital terrestrial television in Finland was launched on August 21, 2001. The analogue networks continued its broadcasts alongside the digital ones until September 1, 2007, when they were shut down nationwide.

Contents

Before the analogue switchoff, the terrestrial network had three multiplexes: MUX A, MUX B and MUX C. MUX A contained the channels of the public broadcaster Yleisradio and MUX B was shared between the two commercial broadcasters: MTV3 and Nelonen. MUX C contained channels of various other broadcasters. After the analogue closedown, a fourth multiplex named MUX E was launched.

All Yles channels are broadcast free-to-air, so are a few commercial ones including MTV3, Nelonen, Sub, Jim, Nelonen Pro 2 and Kutonen.

There are also several pay channels. These are sold only by PlusTV.

History

The official launch took place on August 21, 2001. Under the original plans the channel's available would be, other than the four analogue ones: Yle's news channel (YLE24), Yle's cultural and educational channel (YLE Teema), Yle's Swedish channel (FST), a regional station (CityTV), a sports channel (Urheilukanava), a film channel from Helsinki Media (Elokuvakanava), a "school channel" from WSOY (Alfa+), a lifestyle channel (Wellnet) and Canal+. [1]

The Yle's channels, MTV3, Nelonen and Urheilukanava (later renamed Nelonen Sport) were on board from the start. WSOY eventually decided to withdraw from the project without launching their channel, [2] as did Canal+ and Elokuvakanava. [3] CityTV eventually turned into the entertainment channel SubTV.

In 2003, MTV Oy started en "extra" channels, MTV3+, which offered some extra sports content. Nelonen also had an extra channel called Nelonen Plus. TV Viisi started in March 2004.

Canal Digital launched pay television with three Canal+ channels in March 2004. [4] A fourth Canal+ channel, Canal+ Sport was added in November. [5] [6] The Disney Channel was added in April 2006 and KinoTV, Eurosport, Discovery, MTV and Nickelodeon in September 2007. [7] In September 2008 the rival operator PlusTV got exclusive rights to all, but CANAL+ channels and Canal Digital was left with them only. The last move in Canal Digital's antenna operations in Finland took place on September 16, 2009, when PlusTV got exclusive rights to CANAL+ channels too. Nowadays Canal Digital operates only via satellite.

PlusTV was launched in November 2006, originally only broadcasting MTV3 Max and Subtv Juniori. They added Subtv Leffa in April [8] and Urheilu+kanava in June 2007. [9]

Both packages got more channels with the launch of MUX E in September 2007: SVT Europa and MTV3 Fakta was added to PlusTV and KinoTV was added to Canal Digital, while Discovery Channel, Eurosport, MTV Finland and Nickelodeon were added to both packages.

September 2007 also saw the launch of the SveaTV package in Ostrobothnia which broadcasts Swedish language channels from a special multiplex.

On the digital platform, subtitling isn't a part of the video stream, but is delivered as a separate data stream, which allows subtitling in multiple languages and the option to remove subtitles. Due to technical problems with the subtitles, many people cancelled their television licenses. This meant that Yle had to make drastic budget cuts. The digital channel YLE Extra was closed on December 31, 2007 and was replaced by YLE TV1+, a simulcast of TV1 with subtitles included in the video stream. TV1+ was replaced by SVT Europa in September 2008. [10]

PlusTV took over Canal Digital's basic channel package ParempiTV on October 1, 2008. This meant that subscriptions for all pay channels were handled by PlusTV, with the exception of the Canal+ channels, which were still sold by Canal Digital. [11]

The pornographic channel Canal 69 ended its broadcasts in August 2009. [12] On September 10, 2009, the news pay sports channel URHOtv starts broadcasting. [13]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DVB</span> Open standard for digital television broadcasting

Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) is a set of international open standards for digital television. DVB standards are maintained by the DVB Project, an international industry consortium, and are published by a Joint Technical Committee (JTC) of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) and European Broadcasting Union (EBU).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yle</span> Finnish national public broadcaster

Yleisradio Oy, abbreviated as Yle, translated into English as the Finnish Broadcasting Company, is Finland's national public broadcasting company, founded in 1926. It is a joint-stock company, which is 99.98% owned by the Finnish state and employs around 3,200 people in Finland. Yle shares many of its organisational characteristics with its British counterpart, the BBC, on which it was largely modelled.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yle Fem</span> Television channel

Yle Fem was Yle's Finland-Swedish national television channel, providing television programmes in the Swedish language in Finland. It was a public-service channel principally intended for Finland's Swedish-speaking minority. Creating understanding over the language and culture border was also one of the channel's recognized objectives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MTV3</span> Finnish commercial television station

MTV3 is a Finnish commercial television channel owned and operated by the media company MTV Oy, originally launched in 13 August 1957 as a programming block and it came to be launched on 1 January 1993 as its own channel. It had the biggest audience share of all Finnish TV channels until Yle TV1 took the lead. MTV actually stands for Mainos-TV, due to the channel carrying advertising for revenue. Number 3 was added later, when the channel was allocated the third nationwide television channel and it generally became known as "Channel Three"—Finnish Broadcasting Company's Yle TV1 and Yle TV2 being the first two—and also to distinguish it from the later MTV Finland, which is a Finnish version of Paramount's MTV channel. From 1957 until 2001, the channel's logo was a stylised owl, changed to an owl's eye after an image renewal in 2001, which was then used until 2013. MTV3 has about 500 employees. It is also known as Maikkari. From 1986 to 1993, Kolmoskanava was a precursor to MTV3. It was shut down at midnight on December 31, and MTV3 immediatly started broadcasting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Television in Finland</span> Overview of television in Finland

Television was introduced in Finland in 1955. Color television started in 1969 and was introduced gradually, with most programs in color by the late 1970s. All terrestrial analogue stations stopped broadcasting on 1 September 2007 after the introduction of digital television; cable providers were allowed to continue analog broadcasting in their networks until 1 March 2008.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sveriges Television</span> Swedish national telecaster and quasi-autonomous non-government entity

Sveriges Television AB, shortened to SVT, is the Swedish national public television broadcaster, funded by a public service tax on personal income set by the Riksdag. Prior to 2019, SVT was funded by a television licence fee payable by all owners of television sets. The Swedish public broadcasting system is largely modelled after the system used in the United Kingdom, and Sveriges Television shares many traits with its British counterpart, the BBC.

Digital terrestrial television is a technology for terrestrial television where television stations broadcast television content in a digital format. DTTV is a major technological advance over analog television, and has largely replaced analog television broadcast, which had been in common use since the middle of the 20th century. Test broadcasts began in 1998 with the changeover to DTTV, also known as the Analog Switchoff (ASO) or Digital Switchover (DSO), which began in 2006 and is now complete in many countries. The advantages of digital terrestrial television are similar to those obtained by digitizing platforms such as cable TV, satellite, and telecommunications: more efficient use of radio spectrum bandwidth, provision of more television channels than analog, better quality images, and potentially lower operating costs for broadcasters.

Canal Digital was a Nordic pay TV and internet service provider in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland that was founded in March 1997 as a joint venture between the French pay TV company Canal+ and the Norwegian telecommunications operator Telenor.

C More Entertainment AB was a pay television company that previously operated as Canal+. It targets Nordic countries and has a separate channel in Sweden.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SVT World</span> Television channel

SVT World was an international television channel from the Swedish broadcaster Sveriges Television. The channel was available on satellite in Europe and much of Africa, Australia and Asia, terrestrially in parts of Finland and worldwide via IPTV.

DVB-T2 is an abbreviation for "Digital Video Broadcasting – Second Generation Terrestrial"; it is the extension of the television standard DVB-T, issued by the consortium DVB, devised for the broadcast transmission of digital terrestrial television. DVB has been standardized by ETSI.

Digital terrestrial television was launched in Sweden in 1999. The shutdown of the analogue equivalent started on September 19, 2005, and was finalized on October 15, 2007.

Digital terrestrial television in Denmark was technically launched in March 2006 after some years of public trials. The official launch was at midnight on 1 November 2009, when analogue broadcasts ceased nationwide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PlusTV</span> Finnish television network

PlusTV was a finnish pay-broadcasting television network that was sign on 2006-2016 and is owned by Finnish telecommunications service DNA Oyj,

Discovery Channel Finland is a television channel targeting Finland owned by Discovery Networks. It has programming similar to its U.S. counterpart, the Discovery Channel.

MTV Leffa was a Finnish television channel broadcasting movies. It was operated by MTV3 and TV4 AB and was the Finnish equivalent of TV4's movie channel TV4 Film. Dvrc and My Fresh Pony was created 14 July 2010 – 26 February 2012.

Television in North Macedonia was first introduced in 1964; it remains the most popular news medium. The public broadcaster is the Macedonian Radio Television, founded in 1993. TEKO TV (1989) from Štip is the first private television channel in the country. Other popular private channels are: Sitel, Kanal 5, Telma, Alfa TV, Alsat-M and TV 24.Most private media are tied to political or business interests and state media tend to support the government. Public broadcast networks face stiff competition from commercial stations, which dominate the ratings. A European Union sponsored report says that with scores of TV and radio networks, the market is overcrowded and many local broadcasters are struggling to survive financially.

Boxer TV A/S is a company that is broadcasting pay television channels on the digital terrestrial television network in Denmark since February 1, 2009. It is a subsidiary of Boxer TV Access, a Swedish company which is owned by Com Hem.

Ruutu+ Urheilu 1 is a package of Finnish sports-oriented television channels owned and operated by Nelonen.

Taavi Vartia is a Finnish Film director, script writer and writer. Taavi Vartia has since 1990 planned, directed and produced programmes for all of Finland's national television channels: YLE TV1, YLE TV2, MTV3 and Nelonen, across a range of genres including drama, entertainment, music, profiles and documentaries. He has been involved in the production of over 1100 episodes. Vartia has also written and directed several company- and image videos for Finnish companies. In recent years he has received recognition as a writer of young adult dramas and as a documentary film maker. Vartia has published four novels. Vartia founded Taaborin kesäteatteri/ Taabori Summer Theater in Nurmijärvi 2009 and started to run the movie theatre Kino Juha 2019.

References

  1. "Preparatory work of digital tv progresses on schedule". DigiTV. 2000.
  2. "Yhden toimiluvan saaneen vetäytyminen digi-tv:stä valitettavaa". August 22, 2001.
  3. "Canal+ siirtää televisiokanaviensa maanpäällisen digitaalisen lähetystoiminnan aloittamista Suomessa". DigiTV. December 7, 2001.
  4. "CANAL+-kanavat aloittavat maanpäällisessä digiverkossa". DigiTV. December 1, 2003.
  5. "CANAL+:lle toimilupamuutos: Canal+ Sport myös maanpäälliseen digitelevisioon". DigiTV. October 28, 2004.
  6. "Uusi urheilukanava digitelevisioon - CANAL+SPORT aloittaa digi-tv:ssä". DigiTV. November 9, 2004.
  7. "Maanpäällisen digi-tv-verkon ohjelmatarjonta kasvaa - Disney Channel osaksi CANAL+ -pakettia". April 10, 2006. Archived from the original on September 27, 2011. Retrieved September 9, 2009.
  8. "MTV3's pay TV film channel to be available in April" (Press release). PlusTV. February 23, 2007.
  9. "Urheilukanava aloittaa maksu-tv-toimintansa Suomessa PlusTV:n paketissa" (Press release). PlusTV. May 28, 2007.
  10. SVT Europa i hela Finland Archived 2007-12-22 at the Wayback Machine , Vasabladet, December 20, 2007
  11. "PlusTV takes on Canal Digital subs". broadbandtvnews. September 3, 2008.
  12. "Canal69 poistuu AntenniTV:stä". August 7, 2009.
  13. "URHOtv aloittaa lähetykset antenniverkossa 10. syyskuuta". DigiTV. August 24, 2009.