Digital terrestrial television in Denmark

Digital terrestrial television in Denmark was officially launched in March 2006 after some years of public trials. The analogue broadcasts shut down nationwide at midnight on November 1, 2009.

As of February 2008, only one national multiplex is available, broadcasting DR1, DR2, TV 2 and a channel shared by DR Update and sign language simulcast of DR/TV2 news using the DVB-T technology and MPEG-2 compression in 64-QAM mode.

History

Pre-launch

In 1999, a trial was launched in Copenhagen and Zealand. Another trial was launched in 2002 on northern Jutland, broadcasting the three public service channels and an experimental regional channel called "TV2/Nord-Digital".

In June 2005, a broad majority consisting of Venstre, the Conservative People's Party, the Social Democrats, the Radical Liberal Party, the Socialist People's Party and Danish People's Party agreed that the analogue broadcasts would cease in October 2009.

National launch

The official launch was made on March 31, 2006 after some months of national trials with one multiplex covering the entire country. It offered the national analogue channels DR1 and TV 2, as well as DR2, a stream for signed simulcasts of news programmes on the three other channels and the MHP services DR extra and TV 2 Extra. February 19, 2008, DR Update started broadcasting on the simulcast channel when this channel was not used for simulcasting (between 17 and 20 o'clock). The multiplex was operated by I/S DIGI-TV, a joint-venture...
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