Arte - Transmission and Reception

Transmission and Reception

In France, in digital broadcast programming is available permanently on digital cable, digital satellite and digital terrestrial television.

Arte is more popular in France (market share of about 5%) than in Germany (about 1%), but in Germany it has much more competition and in fact it is the public service German channels who produce a great deal of the content that is sourced by ARTE. Political and administrative control at ARTE is very much in French hands but it is the Germans who produce the majority percentage of the channel's European programme content.

Arte is also formally available in Belgium, Austria, Israel, the Netherlands, Portugal and Switzerland via cable. While viewers spanning from the UK to Iran take advantage of the ASTRA and HOTBIRD transmissions. Though SD on HOTBIRD is now MPEG-4 which most SD receivers cannot decode the video of although audio is still heard. Hence ASTRA has become the primary ARTE source for non-HD viewers in Europe, North Africa and West Asia.

The Australian Special Broadcasting Service translates many Arte programs into English for broadcast on its own television network and overseas.

Many French-language Arte programs are also broadcast in Canada on the ARTV cable channel, partly owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (85%) and Arte itself (15%).

On 1 July 2008, Arte began broadcasting in HDTV (720p/50) via DVB-S2 on Astra. Arte is now the second available 24-hour HDTV channel transmitting via satellite to their German and French audience, next to the German Sky pay TV HDTV channel.