Al Jazeera Sports adds HDTV

[SAT-WORLD]

In a surprise move Al Jazeera’s sports division has added an HDTV channel to transmit its exclusive coverage of the Euro 2008 soccer tournament.

Al Jazeera is making a major play to capture a slice of the Middle East’s all-important sports fans. Arab Radio & Television was the region’s early pioneer in terms of HDTV, showing some of the 2006 World Cup matches in HD. Financially the transmissions were a disaster, and did little to help HDTV penetration in the region.

Now Al Jazeera Sport is trying a different tack, and has bought conditional access equipment from SIDSA (their KeyFly equipment) to protect its HD transmissions. KeyFly also manages viewers’ access to Al Jazeera Sport’s other premium products, not least the Spanish and Italian leagues, Formula 1 racing and the current European soccer Cup.

It is too early to say what sort of impact Euro 2008 is having on Arab audiences, or to what extent Al Jazeera Sport will wholly encrypt this or its other mass-entertainment sports channels. In the past Al Jazeera Sport has worked with ART to retail some of its sports programming. And without doubt there has to be a strong possibility that premium sports will continue to be scrambled over the Middle East, and that Al Jazeera’s sports channels will fully embrace pay-TV but without formally joining one of the three other rival pay-TV operators.


Source:Rapid Tv News

[SAT-WORLD]

Al Jazeera Sports HD

Badr C @26E

4120.00H
27500
3/4

Nilesat 101/102/Atlantic Bird 4 @7°W

12284.00 V
27500
3/4

[remlap]

Clearly C-Band is being used for a reason here

[wod]

is it not going to be on hotbird then ?