German public broadcaster ZDF has incorporated three new services within its free-to-air digital package available on Astra (19.2 degrees East), transponder 77 (11.954 GHz H, SR 27.500, FEC 3/4), and on German cable networks. Eurosport and Euronews joined the bouquet on Friday as third party-channels, currently testing, with the official launch to take place on April 1.

On the same day, ZDF launches its documentary channel ZDF.doku which has also started test transmissions. It is the first time that Euronews and Eurosport are available free- to-air to digital DTH homes on Astra. To prevent cannibalisation, only the German soundtrack is currently offered in ZDF’s package. Both services so far have only been part of encrypted pay-TV platforms.

To make room for the additional channels, the pan-European cultural channel Arte and Phoenix, the events-covering and docmentary channel jointly operated by ARD and ZDF, left ZDF’s package and continue in ARD’s digital bouquet only.

A change took place in ARD’s package as well. N3, the television channel of ARD’s North-German regional affiliate NDR, changed its place with Arte.

For feeding its signal to ARD’s uplink in Frankfurt (a separate feed is required for the digital signal), Arte wants to switch-on a digital SCPC carrier on Hot Bird 5 (13 degrees East), using a small part of its analogue transponder 128. First tests were noted on 11.061 GHz V recently.