RAI to air World Cup in HD
April 15, 2010
From Branislav Pekic in Rome
Italian public broadcaster RAI will air the 2010 World Cup in South Africa on its RAI HD channel. The matches for which RAI has acquired the Italian TV rights (mostly of the Italian national team and the final stages) will be transmitted in RAI HD on DTT multiplex 4. It is highly likely that the channel will also be aired on the TivùSat DTH platform, negotiations with Telespazio for transponder space are at an advanced stage. Only SD-only receivers are currently available for the TivùSat platform, but TivùSat is currently certifying new HD receivers that should be available by the summer.
Sky Italia has already confirmed it will be airing all of the World Cup matches in HD for its subscribers, although none of them will be in 3D.
Mediaset Premium is launching this month a new HD receiver for its On Demand service which distributes movies during the night to the digital boxes that can be subsequently watched by users. Due to a lack of DTT capacity, Mediaset Premium is currently transmitting only two Italian league games weekly in HD. When more frequency space becomes available (not likely before 2011), the broadcaster plans to launch the Premium Movie Channel HD.