At the moment available HDTV channels over satellite

Eins Festival HDHaving a working VDR, which can handle HDTV (H.264) content, has a touch of academic nature nowadays. The stations, which offer their content via DVB-S2 standard are just a few and what they send doesn’t really attract people.

That’s why the following news is worth to mention: “Eins Festival HD”, a German corporate station under public law (free to air, and funded by the public) started to air HDTV content on the 22. December 2008. And now the important part, with content worth watching. The biggest highlights are:

  • BBC’s Planet Earth (11 sequels, starting 1.1.2009 at 17:00 CET)
  • a few live concerts with e.g. Rihanna or the Foofighters

Especially BBC’s Planet Earth is a real stress test for your soft and hardware. There are a few scenes, where thousand and thousand birds flying over a sea, or are raising from the ground up into the air. If you don’t get frame drops here, you and your system made it.

Now the bad part. “Eins Festival HD”, is in German language, is going to air only content of 180 hours (a bit more, than 1 week) and it’s going to be 1280x720p (50fps/noninterlaced).

I’m using this channels.conf below for HDTV. It’s divided into a German part and a encrypted + international part. I don’t know if the last part can only be seen with VDR by pirate solution (sc-plugin and a current SoftCam.Key or card sharing), because I don’t know what have already been cracked respectively opened. And I don’t know either if CI modules for DVB-S2 cards are already available.
I’ve just collected these channels in order to have a more or less complete collection of HDTV channels on the satellites Astra(19.2°E) and Hotbird (13.0°E).

:->HDTV German
ASTRA HD+;BetaDigital:11914:hC910M2O35S1:S19.2E:27500:1279:0;1283=deu:0:0:131:133:6:0
PREMIERE HD,PREM ORF 1 HD;ORF:10832:hC56M2O0S0:S19.2E:22000:1920:1921=deu,1922=eng;1923=deu:1925:D05,1702,648,D95,9C4,1833:61920:1:1057:0
HD1;Euro1080:10758:vC78M2O0S0:S23.5E:22000:38:37=eng:0:622,624:1081:9999:3104:0
HD2/5;Euro1080:10758:vC78M2O0S0:S23.5E:22000:260:0;261=eng:0:0:1:9999:3104:0
ANIXE HD;BetaDigital:11914:hC910M2O35S1:S19.2E:27500:1535:0;1539=deu:0:0:132:133:6:0
arte HD;ZDFvision:11362:hC23M5O35S1:S19.2E:22000:6210:6221=deu,6222=fra:6230:0:11120:1:1011:0
Simul HD;IRT:11361:hC23M5O35S1:S19.2E:22000:6410:6420=deu:0:0:11140:1:1011:0
EinsFestival HD;ARD:12422:hC34M2O0S0:S19.2E:27500:1601:1602=deu;1606=deu:0:0:28396:1:1201:0
:-->HD-International
HD;PREMIERE:11914:hC910M2O35S1:S19.2E:27500:767:0;771=deu,772=eng:32:1837,1833,1834,9C4:129:133:6:0
DISCOVERY HD,DISC HD;PREMIERE:11914:hC910M2O35S1:S19.2E:27500:1023:0;1027=deu:32:1837,1833,1834,9C4:130:133:6:0
CANAL+ HD;DIGITAL+:10847:vC56M2O0S0:S19.2E:22000:175:0:0:0:30162:1:1058:0
CANAL+ HD;CSAT:12522:vC23M5O35S1:S19.2E:22000:160:0;82=fra,83=eng:0:100:9201:1:1106:0
NATIONAL GEO HD;CSAT:12522:vC23M5O35S1:S19.2E:22000:161:0;86=fra:0:100:9202:1:1106:0
TF1 HD;CSAT:12522:vC23M5O35S1:S19.2E:22000:163:0;94=fra:0:100:9204:1:1106:0
CANAL HD TEST 3;IMEDIA:12522:vC23M5O35S1:S19.2E:22000:164+163:0;98=fra,99=eng:0:100:9220:1:1106:0
CINE PREMIER HD;CSAT:12580:vC23M5O35S1:S19.2E:22000:160:0;82=fra,83=eng:0:100:9301:1:1110:0
13EME RUE HD;CSAT:12580:vC23M5O35S1:S19.2E:22000:161:0;86=fra:0:100:9302:1:1110:0
DISNEY MAGIC HD;CSAT:12580:vC23M5O35S1:S19.2E:22000:162:0;90=fra,91=eng:0:100:9303:1:1110:0
M6 HD;CSAT:12580:vC23M5O35S1:S19.2E:22000:170:0;122=fra:0:100:9310:1:1110:0
FRANCE 2 HD;CSAT:12610:vC56M2O0S0:S19.2E:22000:171:124=fra;126=fra:0:0:9611:1:1112:0
TVP HD - test;TVP:10773:hC56O0S0:S19.2E:22000:517:700=pol;701=pol:0:9B2,9D0:17126:1:1053:0

If you are looking for a complete list of all available HDTV channels. Here is a quite good overview:

Bringing this list into a format, VDR can handle is not part of this article.