Sky Italia ( Sky), with about 5 million households (transmission: DTH IPTV DTT).Shareholders include Mediaset, Telecom Italia Media and the State-owned company Rai.
Tivù Sat, a Free Satellite Service similar to the UK version Freesat, was launched in June 2009, ensuring access to national television channels from digital terrestrial television networks. As of today, almost all channels on the platform broadcasts in HD. HDTV regular services started in June 2006 under the name Sky HD, with the broadcasting of the 2006 FIFA World Cup in High Definition. In 2003 these merged into Sky Italia, today this pay TV platform is broadcasting from Hot Bird satellites. Italy has had digital satellite broadcasts since the 1990s, with the launch of Stream TV and TELE+. Licence fee payers from the region were entitled to a 50 euros discount off the price of a digital television decoder or a new, digital-compatible TV set. Beginning October 31, 2008, in the first region of Italy planned to interrupt analog transmission, Sardinia, television networks broadcast multiplexes only in digital format. In July 2008 the European Commission's directorate for competition expressed concerns on whether the actions taken by the current Italian government would be able to alter the current status of duopoly in the broadcasting market held by RAI and Mediaset. The HD signal has been transmitted over the Turin area, using DVB-T hierarchical modulation, and only specially crafted decoders have been able to receive this signal: they were placed in strategical points in the town.ĭuring the UEFA Euro 2008 and the 2008 Summer Olympics, RAI started experimental high definition broadcasting on Rai Test HD, available only in Turin, Milan, Rome, Sardinia and Aosta Valley, continuing with the 2008 UCI Road World Championships and a few matches of the UEFA Champions League. In February 2006, during the 2006 Winter Olympics held in Turin, RAI experimentally broadcast a number of sport events using a 1080i signal and H264 coding. Starting from January 2005 Mediaset and Telecom Italia Media started offering pay TV services through a prepaid smartcard, including football games, movies and TV shows. The Berlusconi II Cabinet started promoting the digital format in December 2003 by granting a public financial contribution for the purchase of a MHP digital television decoder.
Television providers Digital terrestrial television ĭigital terrestrial television technology has expanded rapidly and now every major network in Italy (including RAI and Mediaset) transmits in DVB-T format, while analog broadcasts were continued until the end of the transition, originally set by law to December 31, 2006, but later pushed back to the end of 2012.
2.1.18 Digital satellite only (free to air).2.1.17 Lower channels, teleshopping channel, lower network and local channels.2.1.8 Television Broadcasting System S.r.l.2.1.1 RAI – Radiotelevisione italiana S.p.A.2.1 Most important all national free-to-view channels.