Digital terrestrial television Digital terrestrial television (DTTV or DTT, or DTTB with "broadcasting") is a technology for terrestrial television in which land-based (terrestrial) television stations broadcast television content by radio waves to televisions in consumers' ...

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

( pt, Televisão Digital Terrestre, or TDT) started on 29 April 2009 with currently (as of December 2016) 7

free-to-air Free-to-air (FTA) services are television (TV) and radio services broadcast in unencrypted form, allowing any person with the appropriate receiving equipment to receive the signal and view or listen to the content without requiring a subscripti ...

(FTA) channels. In the

Azores ) , motto =( en, "Rather die free than subjected in peace") , anthem= ( en, "Anthem of the Azores") , image_map=Locator_map_of_Azores_in_EU.svg , map_alt=Location of the Azores within the European Union , map_caption=Location of the Azores wi ...

and

Madeira Islands ) , anthem = ( en, "Anthem of the Autonomous Region of Madeira") , song_type = Regional anthem , image_map=EU-Portugal_with_Madeira_circled.svg , map_alt=Location of Madeira , map_caption=Location of Madeira , subdivision_type=Sovereign st ...

, the respective regional channels (

RTP Açores RTP Açores is a Portuguese free-to-air regional television channel owned and operated by state-owned public broadcaster Rádio e Televisão de Portugal (RTP) in the Autonomous Region of the Azores. It began broadcasting on 10 August 1975 from it ...

RTP Madeira RTP Madeira is a Portuguese free-to-air regional television channel owned and operated by state-owned public broadcaster Rádio e Televisão de Portugal (RTP) in the Autonomous Region of Madeira. It began broadcasting on 6 August 1972. It is broa ...

) are also available. In June 2010 TDT coverage reached 83% of the population and was expected to reach 100% by the end of 2010. The analog switch-off occurred on 26 April 2012. The already four existing analog FTA channels simulcasted in DVB-T, MPEG-4/

H.264 Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also referred to as H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10, is a video compression standard based on block-oriented, motion-compensated coding. It is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression, and distr ...

(digital), and

PAL Phase Alternating Line (PAL) is a colour encoding system for analogue television. It was one of three major analogue colour television standards, the others being NTSC and SECAM. In most countries it was broadcast at 625 lines, 50 fields (25 ...

(analog). The TDT process was broken into two different licenses: one for the management of the FTA network and frequencies, and one for the management and distribution of pay TV channels and content. Both licenses were won by

Portugal Telecom Altice Portugal (formerly known as Portugal Telecom or PT) is the largest telecommunications service provider in Portugal. Since June 2, 2015, the company has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Altice Europe, a multinational cable and telecommuni ...

(PT). PT acquired also the transmitter network of

Televisão Independente TVI - initialism for Televisão Independente ("Independent Television") - is Portugal's fourth terrestrial television channel, launched in 1993. It was the most watched channel in Portugal from 2005 to 2019. It competes directly with SIC and R ...

(TVI), thus becoming the sole broadcaster of analog television signals. ANACOM's objective was to have 5 TDT FTA channels (including a new 5th FTA channel) and a paid TV offer of around 40 channels. The plan for a paid TV offer was abandoned when PT announced that they were returning the paid TV license to ANACOM, which returned the million paid by PT for the license. The creation of the 5th TV channel has been criticized by the main private broadcasters, TVI and

Sociedade Independente de Comunicação SIC (acronym of full name Sociedade Independente de Comunicação) ("Independent Communication Society") is a Portuguese television network and media company, which runs several television channels. Their flagship channel is the eponymous SIC, th ...

(SIC). They argued that the television advertising market is already saturated and a new broadcaster would be detrimental to the existing channels.

Channels

References

Television in Portugal

2009 establishments in Portugal {{Europe-tv-stub