HD & UHD

Since the launch of high definition in Europe in 2005, Eutelsat has been the industry innovator. The number of HD channels broadcast via our satellites has increased from 10 in 2006, to around 2200 in 2021.

According to Screen Digest, more than 103 million homes in Europe are equipped with HD-Ready displays, making HD available in over 60% of households. Euroconsult forecasts that the share of HD channels in the worldwide satellite broadcasting market will increase from 23% in 2016 to 46% in 2026.

This trend is accelerating in leading satellite television markets in Europe, including in Italy and Poland where the number of HD channels rose during the year by 70% and 30% respectively, reflecting the premium offers of anchor pay-TV platforms.

Eutelsat provides end-to-end broadcasting solutions, including encoding, encrypting, multiplexing and uplinking, via our teleports in France and Italy or our worldwide network of partner teleports.

Satellites are a natural platform for broadcasting UHD content. Their bandwidth availability and wide coverage areas enables viewers to receive the same quality signal wherever they are located within the satellite coverage. Eutelsat's satellite capacity is fully UHD ready and already distributes UHD content to cable and IP network operators as well as DTH homes across our extensive satellite footprints.

UHD broadcasting has been facilitated with the HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) standard which offers improved compression rates and High Dynamic Range (HDR). At the HOTBIRD video neighbourhood, channels including Fashion TV’s FTV UHD and Travelxp 4K have already selected HEVC encoding.

For live events, such as major sports and other events, HEVC encoding enables broadcasts at a lower bit rate than in MPEG-4. Eutelsat regularly demonstrates this at the French Open, where tennis matches broadcast in Ultra HD via our EUTELSAT 5 West A satellite, give fans a stunning view of the action.

As demand for UHD grows, and broadcasters look to differentiate their offer, satellite provides the perfect distribution platform to handle bandwidth requirements, delivering consistent quality to a maximum of viewers across wide geographic regions.