Business News Holding

Tag: tour-de-france

  • Sky's HDTV sports coverage set to get boost

    The addition of Eurosport’s HD channel to Sky HD would mean major sporting events such as the Tour de France and Olympics broadcast in high def

    Eurosport could be returning to UK screens after a three year gap if negotiations currently being held with Sky are succesful.
    The sports network is expected to add its HD channel to the Sky HD platform within the next few days.

    It is understood to be currently testing at 28 degrees East alongside Eurosport News.
    A Eurosport spokesman said: “We’ve been negotiating with Sky and are very keen to launch our service in the UK.”

    Speaking to Broadband TV News he said that the cross promotion on Eurosport’s standard definition channels had encouraged a number of viewer enquiries.

    The channel is expected to be made available to subscribers to Sky’s HD Mix.
    Eurosport launched its high definition service on May 25, 2008 and is currently broadcasting live HD coverage of the Tour de France.

    The channel has picked up significant carriage in France, Poland, Israel, the Benelux and Scandinavia.
    After the channel’s original launch it was replaced by Eurosport 2, which was launched in 2005.
    This channel included some Eurosport News programming, but continued as a standalone operation in other markets.

    Speaking before the launch of Eurosport’s HD service in May, Laurent-Eric Le Lay, the network’s group chairman, said he wanted to provide as much high def coverage as possible.
    As well as this year’s French Open-Roland Garros tennis Grand Slam the channel’s HD offerings include the Tour de France and the Beijing Olympics.
    “Sport, especially live is spectacular in high definition; it transforms the viewing experience for sports fans,” he said.

  • Olympics and Tour de France to be aired as Europe's public channels add to their high definition options


    The UK’s BBC has begun testing the transmission of high def services over Freeview in a move that could see the introduction of full HD terrestrial by the end of 2009.
    The broadcaster has started transmissions from a Guildford-based transmitter using the second-generation DVB-T specification DVB-T2.
    Justin Mitchell, leader of the DVB-T2 modem development team at the BBC, said the trial could enable the introduction of HD onto Freeview by December next year.
    DVB-T2 is said to offer 30 per cent more data carrying capacity as DVB-T under the same conditions.
    Across the Channel, the HD version of public channel France 2 has been launched on several platforms, including CanalSat DTH and Numéricable.
    As has been the case with other broadcasters across Europe, including VRT in Belgium and Nederland 1 in The Netherlands, France 2 will show sport events such as the Tour de France and the Beijing Olympics in HD.
    Freeview currently uses the ten-year old DVB-T standard. DVB-T2 was developed for use in a “post-Analogue Switch-Off environment”.
    UK communications regulator Ofcom has said it wants to convert at least one of the nation’s DVB-T multiplexes to DVB-T2 by the end of 2009.
    The test comes as HDTV services begin to flourish in the UK, which has almost 10m HDTV sets currently in use.
    While Sky – the main provider of HD broadcasts in the UK – has barely half a million subscribers signed up to its Sky HD service, much is being made of the May launch of Freesat.
    The venture – a joint initiative between the BBC and ITV – has the potential to give millions of UK viewers access to free HD programmes for the first time.
    Its launch has prompted Sky to cut the price of its Sky+ HD set-top box by 50 per cent.
    Virgin and Apple have also improved their HD offerings recently.

  • European broadcasters expand HD capacity in advance of summer of sport


    The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has taken delivery of HDTV MPEG-2 encoder equipment in order to expand capacity on its contribution network.
    Supplied by NTT Electronics Corporation, the Encoder HE5100 will allow the organisation’s members to cope with the rising demand for HD content.
    This is expected to increase further over the summer with the expansion of HD broadcasts for various major sporting events.
    These include the Beijing Olympics, Euro 2008, the Tour de France, and tennis events at Paris’ Roland Garros and Wimbledon.
    The HDTV MPEG-2 Encoder HE5100 delivered to the EBU, the largest association of national broadcasters in the world, incorporates the internally-developed single-chip MPEG-2 codec LSI.
    As well as allowing the EBU to meet the increasing demand for HD content, the encoder provides high image quality in a compact unit.
    It supports both HDTV signals (1080p/1080i/720p) and SDTV signals (576i/512i/480i).
    NTT Electronics has developed a variety of video compression technologies.