MTVNHD -- the international variant of MHD Palladia -- promised to continue its quest for European domination, and France is next to go, but not on Numericable. Hooking up with SES ASTRA's satellite capacity, the network's bringing music and children's programming to HD CanalSat subscribers at some unspecified future date. so it could be today, tomorrow, next week or later but yes, France, you will soon be ignoring the same extremely limited content loop others have been experiencing for some time now.

TNTSAT, a digital terrestrial free-TV offer via the ASTRA satellite system, has just found its way into 750,000 domiciles across the beautiful French countryside. For those unaware, the service targets regions where TVs cannot receive signals from terrestrial transmitters, and it offers viewers the "full range of French digital terrestrial free-TV channels over the ASTRA satellites, allowing a 100% coverage of France." But that's not all that's being announced today: TNTSAT HD is being launched on February 15, 2009 alongside the launch of free DTT channels in high-def being available on ASTRA; those eager to get a jump on things can expect around ten more SD / HD TNTSAT receivers to become available before the year's end. And to think, we heard that France wasn't exactly rushing to adopt HD back in May -- guess there's nothing like a little kick in the pants to get things going.

HDTV is taking off in Europe, enough for quibbling over who can and is delivering the most channels to start. Eutelsat announced it's currently broadcasting 63 HD channels, making SES Astra's 55 channels seem so small and insignificant that they should probably just change schools, since everyone knows what a loser they are now. Of course, Broadband TV News mentions that number is more like 137 if you add in SES's other satellite programs, so who knows, they may stick around and do battle. Beyond the increased revenues for each satellite operator, Euro HD heads, is all this high definition trickling down to your local programming guide yet?

There's nothing here that wasn't apparent already, but SES ASTRA is just now getting around to boasting about a dozen HD channels that it's hosting to broadcast the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Ready for an exhaustive list? The channels broadcasting the Olympics in HD include for the UK, BBC HD, for France, France 2 HD and CANAL+ HD, for Germany, ANIXE HD, for Poland, TVP HD, for the Slovak Republic, STV3, for the Netherlands, 1 HD, for Belgium een HD, for Spain, TELEDEPORTE HD, for Sweden, Viasat HD and SVT HD and for Austria, ORF HD. So yeah, if you somehow missed this for the first week of the Games, at least you're clued in now.

[Image courtesy of Beijing 2008]

Poised to take advantage of the dearth of classical music television stations in the U.S., Unitel Classica is planning a worldwide classical channel formatted for HDTV. The German production company already supplies HD concerts via satellite in Europe on SES Astra, and the Classica standard definition opera and classical channel in several countries. The new channel will launch in Germany first in the fourth quarter, before potentially making the jump over here. With that much experience behind them, and the enthusiastic response to opera and classical broadcasts already available, Unitel should be ready to give the classical fans what they've been waiting for sometime in 2009.

SES ASTRA's at it again, this time adding ARTE HD's German programming starting July 1. Francophones can look forward to their edition in HD at a later date, but for now this brings the total number of HD channels on ASTRA up to 35. Unfortunately there's not a cool sports event tie-in like Euro 2008 for this launch but fans of culture and the arts (yeah, sure) should have plenty to check out in HD.

SES Astra doesn't seem to have trouble filling Sat.1 and ProSieben HD's transponder, its latest HD channel is German speaking broadcaster ORF HD. Scheduled to kick off May 1, it should offer all of ORF1's HD content including all 31 UEFA EURO 2008 matches.That's a good number, since SES Astra and SES Sirius now offer a total of 31 HD channels via satellite including BSkyB, BBC, Discovery, National Geographic, Canal+, M6 and others, with plans to reach 100 channels by 2010. Astra and ORF will team up on marketing the new channel and could possibly add more HD programming in the future, which should hopefully bring the end to any more HD contraction stories out of Europe.

Nearly 15 months after ASTRA first promised to bring HD to Spain, the nation's first high-definition channel has gone live. Canal+ HD -- which is part of Sogecable's digital pay-TV package Digital+ -- has launched on ASTRA and promises to deliver "premium movies, series and sports events such as the 2008 European Soccer Championship whose 31 matches will be broadcast all in HD." To promote (and likely celebrate) the occasion, SES ASTRA and Sogecable have entered into a partnership to trumpet its new offer, which will include "joint commercial and marketing activities for retailers, customers and the TV viewers." Counting the addition of Canal+ HD, ASTRA now broadcasts some 29 HD channels across Europe, and of course, it couldn't close out a press release without boldly proclaiming that it "expects to transmit 100 HD channels" by the end of 2010. Trying to keep up with the Joneses, we presume?