Television in Portugal was introduced in 1956 (test broadcasts) by Radiotelevisão Portuguesa (now named Rádio e Televisão de Portugal), which held the nation-wide television monopoly until late 1992. Regular broadcasting was introduced on March 7, 1957. Colour transmissions were introduced on March 10, 1980.
Digital television as TDT was introduced at a very late stage when compared to other countries in Europe. It was planned to be introduced as early as 2002, this only became true in cable services and as of 2007, TDT was delayed until late 2008. Portuguese television is regulated by the Entidade Reguladora para a Comunicação Social (ERC).[1] In 2007, TVI was the ratings leader with 29% share while RTP1, SIC and RTP2 had 25.2%, 25.1% and 5.2%, respectively.[2]
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On March 7, 1957 public broadcaster Rádio e Televisão de Portugal (RTP) began broadcasting RTP1, the first television channel in the country. A second RTP channel, RTP2, started broadcasting on December 25, 1968. Private commercial channels were launched in the early 1990s, with SIC on October 6, 1992 and TVI on February 20, 1993.
Portugal started digital broadcasts on 29 April 2009 with 6 free access channels, including a High-Definition test channel, and 40 pay channels. It is expected that all the existing terrestrial channels will broadcast in HD as frequencies become free after the analog switch-off.
The four existing analogue channels started simulcasting in DVB-T MPEG4 in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area since November 1, 2008. PT extended this to 80% of the territory on April 29, 2009.
There were two auctions: one for the management of the FTA frequencies, and one for the management and distribution of the pay channels. Both were won by Portugal Telecom. The Government wants around 6 FTA channels (including the analogue channels already broadcasting) and 40 pay channels. This means there will be a pay-TV offer over DTT, even after the failure of the Spanish and British offers.
PT was announced as the winner of both the auctions. PT acquired the transmitter network of Televisão Independente, thus becoming the sole provider of analogue television signals. The creation of a third private TV channel has also been criticized by the main private broadcasters, TVI and SIC. Both of them argue that the television advertising market is already full and a new broadcaster would be prejudicial for the existing channels. It is worth mentioning that during the fiscal year of 2007, SIC and TVI had 185,2 and 222,4 million euros of advertising revenues, respectively.
As of worldwide sport events, the common broadcasters usually start a temporary HD channel for digital television users. For the UEFA Euro 2008, TVI launched TVI HD to broadcast the event in HD (although you could also see the channel 24 hours) and for the Beijing Olympics 2008, RTP has launched RTP HD, but this one had non-continuous programming, broadcasting only the Olympics (which come to air very late night) and some RTP2 sports programing during the day, pausing in the morning to around 15 (3 p.m) for Desporto 2 and then stopping again until 21 (9 p.m) to show primetime during the week and movies during weekend. Night was filled with the Olympics from 0 to 2 (12 am to 2 am) with reruns and 2 to 7 am with live events. MOV also launched a HD channel in 2008.
Also for the UEFA Euro 2008, SportTV launched an HD simulcast of SportTV 1, which was, in the beginning of 2009, replaced with the all-native HD, SportTV HD. Also in 2009, RTP relaunched RTP HD, now with a different name, RTP1 HD (name still used for some sports broadcasts, since the channel was again renamed RTP HD). SIC also start test broadcasts, with UEFA Europa League broadcasts. Thematic channels, AXN, FOX, FOX Life, TVCine, Syfy Universal, also started their HD broadcasts in 2009.
Optimus Clix has launched in 2006 a service called SmarTV (rebranded as Optimus Clix TV), provided on Amino and Motorola STBs, with VoD provided by Kasenna MediaBase video servers. PT Comunicações (Portugal Telecom) has also launched one called meo, providing that the spin-off of subsidiary PT Multimédia was concluded. Vodafone also launched an IPTV service called Vodafone Casa TV.
All cable providers in Portugal are slowly introducing digital television. ZON has already started one since 2003, but it is quite poor in amount of channels and image quality, which is very compressed even in premium channels.
Digital satellite services have existed since 1998. Currently, the providers are ZON and meo operating in Hispasat.
All operators have mobile TV under UMTS platforms.
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