SD shutdown: Many thousands of TV households only see black on ARD

Probably hundreds of thousands of households in Germany now have to buy a new television. As of January 7th, many older TV sets will no longer be able to receive the first and third programs.

According to the announcement, ARD will stop satellite broadcasting of its channels in SD quality on this date and will only broadcast in HD quality; major cable network operators want to take part in the switch-off at the same time.

About a year ago, according to the industry report “Astra TV Monitor 2023”, around 2.7 million TV households in Germany only had one SD device at home.

According to their announcement, the programs ZDF, ZDFinfo, ZDFneo, 3sat and KiKA will follow the SD shutdown a little later, in November of this year. The cultural channel Arte as well as Phoenix and the special interest channel One have been available exclusively in HD since 2022.

The abbreviation SD stands for a digital television signal in standard definition; this quality has been considered outdated for years. All major TV channels now also offer HD quality, i.e. transmission in razor-sharp image resolution.

According to a survey by the German Press Agency, the major German private broadcasters can all still be received in SD for the foreseeable future. “You can watch our channels in all ways – SD and HD. And it will stay that way for a long time,” said a spokesman for the ProSiebenSat.1 channel family. And the TV group RTL emphasized: “All of RTL Deutschland’s free TV channels (RTL, RTLup, Nitro, Vox, VOXup, ntv, Super RTL, RTLzwei and Toggo plus) are available in both SD and HD. One SD shutdown is not planned for the foreseeable future.”

The shutdown of SD transmission actually only affects those TV households that receive their television programs via satellite. “However, the SD shutdown could also mean a change for cable customers, as some cable network operators have already announced that they will also end the distribution of ARD television programs in SD quality on January 7, 2025,” explained ARD. “If you have any questions, please contact your local cable network operator directly.”

45.5 percent of German households with television reception watch via satellite (as of the end of 2023). According to the survey, most of them already have an HD-capable device at home, so they don’t have to do anything. Users of digital antenna television DVB-T2 are also not affected.