While many regions and markets see video demand growth arrive in peaks and valleys, the constant and steady expansion of the Central & Eastern European video distribution and DTH segments has come with near clocklike regularity over the last five years (or more). The latest illustrations of this trend include:

-  A 6 January 2011 report that Albania's DigitAlb pay-TV platform extended for three additional years its contract for five transponders on Eutelsat satellites operating at the 16 degree East location.
-  In mid-December 2010, SES Astra announced two deals for its 31.5 degree East location: with CME, a media and entertainment company operating broadcasting, Internet and TV content businesses in six Central and Eastern European countries; and Ukraine's state owned Ukrkosmos for distribution to cable headends and terrestrial networks in the country.

Just looking solely to Ku-band distribution and DTH services, NSR registered more than 2,100 new channels for satellite carriage in the Central & Eastern European market in the last several years as new and existing DTH, IPTV, cable bouquets, and DTT overlay platforms emerged and expanded. This engendered about 140 TPEs of additional Ku-band capacity demand in the 2005 to 2010 period.

Going forward, NSR could easily foresee another 2,500 channels going up in the coming ten years requiring some 80 to 90 TPEs of additional Ku-band capacity. In pure channel numbers, NSR expects that for every new HD or 3D channel carried in the region on a DTH or distribution platform in the coming ten years, there will be some nine additional SD channels put up as well. Yet, HD and 3D channels will comprise about 40% of the projected Ku-band capacity demand growth.

The Central & Eastern European video markets offer a few important lessons that are equally applicable in many other regions of the world:

-  It is well known that HD and 3D are important capacity drivers for the satellite industry, but do not forget or ignore classic SD carriage. On average, carriage of additional SD channels will add more new capacity demand than HD or 3D combined with only a few exceptions in specific regional markets.
-  It is also clear from the above chart that MPEG-4 adoption is real. The rate of channel growth exceeds the rate of capacity demand growth into the future, and less capacity is required per channel than in the past. Yet, just as some raised unfounded concerns about lost capacity demand in the analog to digital migration, MPEG-4 adoption is a good thing for the industry because it makes it ever cheaper to launch new DTH services, specialized bouquets and essentially creates more opportunities to segment the TV audiences in each market, leading to further capacity demand.
-  Ultimately the classic video markets will eventually saturate with churn of channels/platforms just offsetting new growth, but NSR does not see this occurring within the next ten years or likely quite a while longer. Potentially more interesting is how classic satellite point-to-multipoint video distribution will intersect with exponential growth of video over the Internet and the proliferation of viewing devices beyond the TV, be it a computer screen, tablet, phone or whatever comes next. Cracking this opportunity should be one of the priorities of the entire industry, but just don’t expect the answer to be easy or quick.