Market information on digital-TV in Norway?

[raygentle]

Hello, friends out there.

I'm a sales manager of a Koean digital receiver (tuner) manufacturer.
I'm planning to develop HD MPEG4 TWIN PVR for Norwegian DVB-T, ntv.
It is the first time for me to be charged for Norwegian market, and I'm a blind for Norwegian language.
I'm now looking for an website where I can find the data of each brand's sales record in Norway.
Basically anything about Norwegian digital receiver market and news will be welcome by me.
Please kindly help me for this matter.

I will recruit a few members of this forum as our beta tester and market researcher in near future.
The beta tester and market researcher will get a free PVR.

Thank you.

Raygentle

[lygren]

Good morning and a warm welcome to you, Ray

I believe "Elektronikkbransjen" may provide you with some figures as to sales volume, try shipping an e-mail to: adm@elektronikkbransjen.no.

I will try to provide you with a general market overview, though. Norway is currently, as is probably the reason for your inquiries on the Norwegian market, establishing our digital TV-network these days, supposed to be finished within 2007 (most of the country) and 2008 (more peripheral areas). There are many companies delivering solutions to this market, among these are:

1. Canal Digital: satellite and cable, a huge actor, operating in the entire Nordic area.
2. Viasat: satellite only.
3. UPC/GET: cable only, strong in Oslo and some other cities, currently converting to digital transmission these days.
4. Various local companies like Lyse, using fiber-optics cables to transmit TV, Internet and telephone-signals.
5. Upcoming NTV, the "official" Norwegian broadcaster of digital airborne TV-signals, and as you state, the product-line open to various producers and will probably, at a very fast phase, become one of the largest actors on the Norwegian broadcasting market when launched in 2007-2008.

The NTV-section has some clear advantages; and disadvantages... The clear advantage is the fact that the user can connect the TV without having to install cables - brilliant. However, the bandwidth of the signal is rather limited, not a very important issue for regular users as long as the image-quality is OK, but for more advanced use like HDTV and interactive material, the other companies in section 1-4 will have clear advantages.

I'd say the most important on a NTV tuner (as to be able to sell and charge a reasonable price) is this:

1. Design - it HAS to look fancy, not the standard plastic tuner look...
2. Signal processing - as the bandwidth of the signal is limited, the need for strong video-processing algorithms is high. The use of a high-quality video-chip that also can be marketed along the tuner is probably good sales-argument, as many TV's are too weak at that regards.
3. Proper signal output - HDMI and component. Although rather low bit-rate, properly processed digital TV-signals may actually look OK, but if the are transferred through an old SCART or composite, much of the internal video-processing will go to waste...