U.K. digital revolution not sweeping Poland yet
The world of television is about to witness a technological seachange as the digital revolution starts to gain sway over European viewers and nowhere are these changes more profound than in the U.K.
Last week, satellite television group British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB), 37.5% owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., announced it would be switching off its analogue satellite transmission and changing to digital in August 2001.
"Murdoch didn't expect that the growth of the digital subscriber base would be so fast, and neither did we," said Krzysztof Surgowt, managing director of Astra Marketing Polska, a subsidiary of Societe Europeenne des Satellites (SES) and operator of Astra satellites, which transmit BskyB's signal. "He understood that soon there would be too few analogue subscribers who could justify spending gigantic sums of money on analogue transponders," he said.
"While the transponder price is roughly the same (for digital and analogue transmission), the difference is that the same satellite transponder, if used on analogue, can transmit only one TV channel, while digital can transmit six to eight channels," said Yves Feltes, also of SES. "You can put more channels on one transponder. It means that it's much cheaper to be transmitted digitally than on analogue."
BskyB's digital service was launched in October 1998 and the planned switch-off will take place about 18 months earlier than expected because of the growing number of digital subscribers.
"It's very clear that digital transmission is a technology of the future, since analogue transmission is a rather inefficient way to use the available frequency spectrum," Feltes said.
Today, one of five satellite homes in Europe receives digitally compressed television channels and no analogue signal. But broadcasters and satellite operators expect that the growth of digital vs. analogue reception will continue and not only in the U.K.
Some 10 million homes in Europe intend to change over to digital satellite television (DSTV), which is more than 6% of all currntly non-DSTV homes in Europe, SES estimates. While in 1996 the number of households receiving a TV signal through an analogue receiver within Astra coverage increased by 1.4 million, in 1998 the number of analogue receivers dropped by 1.3 million.
In Poland, the digital subscriber base is also growing. But, according to market insiders, it is still impossible to predict when the analogue transmission will finally be switched off.
In March, Wizja TV, a digital platform owned by United Pan-Europe Communications (UPC), a multimedia company, had 304,000 subscribers. Cyfra+, a competing digital platform operated by Canal+Cyfrowy, has 330,000 digital subscribers, "not including those who change from analogue to digital transmission every month. And that means (about) 10,000 more," said Tomasz Kazmierowski, deputy director general of Canal+Polska. "Potentially, the digital market could be three to four times bigger, but we are happy with the pace of growth," he said. In March 1999, Cyfra+ had 60,000 subscribers and Wizja TV 150,000.
While the digital subscriber base is growing and almost all Polish-language channels are available digitally, the signals of Polsat, TV Polonia, RTL 7, Canal+Polska and
TV 4 are also transmitted by Eutelsat satellites on an analogue system.
For Polish viewers, the switch to digital may take much longer. According to Kazmierowski, it is too early to pull the plug on analogue. As director of Canal+ Polska, a channel that uses an analogue signal, he said there were many viewers who wanted to continue using the analogue system. "Some 100,000 subscribers watch Canal+ transmitted on analogue; the quality of the signal is very good and it's still popular among clients," he said.
Canal+Polska's analogue signal is available in cable networks, via a terrestrial broadcast and through a satellite.
"I agree that the digital signal, because of its high quality, is the direction the broadcasting industry is going to take, but we (Canal+ Polska) haven't decided when to switch off our analogue signal and convert to digital," Kazmierowski said. "The Polish market is not like the British one and it's usually the affordability of the product that decides. "
While the monthly fee for the best packages containing the largest number of channels is more than zl. 70, Canal+'s subscription costs zl. 39 a month.
"You have to also look at the market realities," said Feltes of SES. "In Germany, for instance, you have more than 12 million households that are equipped for analogue reception. This is a whole different market, a free-to-air market."
In Poland, of the 12 million homes with TVs, about 5 million are covered by a terrestrial broadcast while a portion of the 4 million cable TV users receive the analogue signal.
"And not everybody can afford digital television. We are going to offer both options, analogue and digital, for some time and we will watch the market," Kazmierowski said. "That doesn't mean that we won't decide in a few or more months to convert."
