Dual transmission of dubbed and undubbed TV shows

Is there anyone in the television industry out there who can tell me whether "dual transmission" (i.e. the transmitting the original soundtrack as well as the dubbed version) is actually more expensive for a television station?

I have lived here for a long time now, would consider myself fully bi-lingual, but to this day I am driven insane by the fact that 99.9 % of German broadcasting is dubbed. Anyone who has seen the original English/French/Spanish/whatever version of a film versus the dubbed one will realise that at least 50% of the quality and enjoyment is lost, no matter how well done the dubbing might be.

I realise that one factor at play here is that the dubbing industry in German is enormous and lucrative, and they no doubt want to keep foreigners off their turf. However, dual transmission would allow both options to exist side-by-side, giving people a simple choice. Arte does it from time to time.

If there are no major financial consequences for the broadcasters, then I don't see why they can't do it. Moreover, the long term benefits to the German population as a whole would be significant - I am certain that seeing original English television all their lives is the principal reason why Scandanavians speak much better English than the Germans, not superior linguistic ability.

By now I have such a "Hals" about this matter that I'm really considering taking steps to try to change this, but if dual transmission means major adjustments/costs for the broadcasters, then I know I needn't bother.

Yeh, it would be good if they did. I notice that I get the Travel channel on my satellite from a Hungarian provider, and I can choose between English, Hungarian or Czech. Quite nice. Is there a facility for doing this through DVB-T though or only over a satellite? ie Do DVB-T boxes have this functionality? I've never owned one, so don't know..

Lobbying from the dubbing industry, a bit of cultural blindness (Leitkultur) and the belief that dubbing is more inclusive for the population.

I'm no expert here but I could imagine it has something to with the rights, that dual transmission might mean that the film is actually being shown twice and therefore has to be paid for twice.

The regular cable channels (non digital) have 2 separate audio channels to broadcast 2 languages BUT this means no stereo then for the viewer!!

With lots of people still using analogue cable, it could be a while yet before broadcasters will sacrifice sound quality in favour of providing a foreign language audio choice

What gets me the most is when they don't completely blend out the English and there is a mish mash of the two languages. Completely confusing at times!

When I first came to Munich in 1986 there was a facility either through the tv or , in my case, via the video that you could select the language. I think it was called zweikanalton and by pressing a button you could choose the language. However it was hardly ever used, most films were only shown in German. Some of the films were really obscure and quite often the second language was chinese or something. I can only imagine that they had to pay extra if they wanted to broadcast it in English. This was the main reason I bought a sky system. I haven't heard about this system for years so I assume it died the death.

ARD sometimes show movies with dual language options...the symbol in the TV guides is two interlocking circles...like a decapitated olympic flag with no colours (Well...YOU describe it better!). Also Arte sometimes transmit stuff in dual language, well always in French and German, other times in German/english French/English. Few and far between though.

The thing I don't get is how a country like Australia can have a truly multicultural, multi-language channel (SBS) that is universally respected and watched AND provides a valuable service for the countries' various diasporas whereas in Europe, where we all REALLY need to get along and get our fix of home, there is no such channel...

It's still available on Eurosport.

you stumble across the odd one at 2am but even then we found it wasn't guaranteed to work.

@Jack

Not on digtal satellite it isn't. Which is weird because it is on analog. I thought digital was supposed to be better but in this respect it's worse

Correct.

Depending on how you get Eurosport. In my old flat, Deutsche Telekom dropped dual language, but in the new flat, KMS still has it.

That's a pretty satisfactory description of the symbol. It looks a little bit like the MasterCard logo too. Many programmes on Arté have the option, mostly between French and German _{(at least they used to, I haven't had a tv in 3 years)}.

As Mr Hausen says, they used to do it far more often. I think they figure that if people want to watch original language now they can go the satellite route.


This is the voice of the Mysterons.

you won't get any decent programmes broadcast in dual language with English since, as YL6 has pointed out, there is a rights issue. The German channels buy rights to broadcast in German. British and Irish channels buy the rights to broadcast in English within the Geographic area of their respective countries (BSkyB has rights to broadcast in Ireland as well). Any content which British or Irish channels have already bought and paid for cannot be transmitted in English by any other broadcasters.

On a related note, does anyone know whether any of the DVB-T channels are going to start using the DVB-T subtitles facility (in German, which would at least help with my attempts to learn the language)? There only seem to be 'teletext'-style subtitles, and even these are few and far between. I noticed on the DVB-T channels in the UK that a very large number of programmes have subtitles (albeit sometimes comically misspelt).

I can confirm that along with YL6. Premiere was trying to push its services on me and I said sure, if you show OV movies. The salesman said that they don't due to the license issue, you do have to pay extra for each language.
So if it's a movie that you really like, buy the DVD.

I don't know about this, especially if you're an English speaker. There are a few fully English speaking channels on Astra 1 - BBC World, CNN, Eurosport, MTV, Sky News and others. Try finding a German speaking channel in Australia. While it would be good to have SBS here (my favourite channel in Australia, funny, cause everyone used to laugh at it, but its definitely the best now in my mind), if you come here from an English speaking country, you can get Sky. If you come from France/Poland/Turkey/Czech/etc you can setup a satellite, point it in the right direction, and get a decent amount of channels.

Hutcho, not sure about Australia, but you can certainly pick up DeutscheWelle TV in many parts of East Asia. You can also watch it on Sky.

Yes I was first in Berlin in 1994 and I used/loved that facility but when I came back 2 years go it was gone, again, only available in Arte and the odd program in some of the other channels

Some DW programs (news for example) are available on SBS in Australia...

I'm not sure about satellite in Australia, however due to the size of the country I can imagine that it would really depend on where you were.. in Darwin you can probably pick up Asian satellite, but not in Melbourne.

´The thing about SBS in Australia is that it is locally produced for minorities rather than beamed in from the "home" country.

As opposed to here where Bayerische Rundfunk slashed their foreign language staff and output acouple of years ago.
Likewise when a radio frequency became availabe in Munich there was a choice between a local produced radio service aimed at the Turkish population or a hard core Catholic station
that has already had its knuckles rapped for racism.

Guess which of the options the CSU controlled medica licensing authority awarded the frequency to...

It hadn't occurred to me that it was associated with rights. That of course means additional cost, which probably means it will never be introduced on a broad scale, as I'm sure that in the broadcasters' eyes the additional viewers wouldn't be enough to offset the price.

The system doesn't appear to be too difficult though - as mentioned above, they just broadcast one version on the mono channel and the other in stereo. When I lived in Spain a lot of channels did this routinely, although I don't know if this is still the case.

Oh well, I guess I'll just have keep watching Michael Caine or whoever speaking German...

As far as SBS goes, they've also deteriorated lately. There is a lot more overtly commercial, lowest common demominator content than there used to be, and many of the better films are now screened at crazy hours. Even the 6.30 news is broken up by advertising these days. It has a lot to do with new managerial/board appointments and, surprise, surprise, the Howard government lurking behind these appointments. Still, even if its present form, I'd kill to have it here.

Weird, Premiere show loads of OV movies (although only German is DD5.1), a few years ago it was a major criticism by viewers that they didn't.
Not that I'd recommend Premiere...

As I understand Premiere Direkt (pay-per-view at 3 euros per movie) shows movies in German, Original Version (which tends to be English) and German DD5.1
English Premier League football on Premiere Sport may also be with English commentary, but will try this out once the new season starts.

I did not realise it was a rights issue on analogue cable. I thought the reason for having both sound channels in German was because of higher quality stereo.

Digital Cable (at an additional cost) have some channels in German and English (both in stereo), eg. AXN, National Geographic, Turner Classic Movies. Unfortunately I am on KMS cable and not Kabel Deutschland and KMS excludes BBC Prime (otherwise I would sign up with the English Digital Cable package as I did in Frankfurt).

Premiere is encoded and the decoders and cards are theoretically only available within Germany. Premiere have obviously bought the rights to the Original version as well as the German language version. This will not impinge on the British and Irish channels since their rights are for Britain and Ireland. Where it becomes problematic is where a TV programme is broadcast via satellite and NOT encoded, so is available for viewers to watch in multiple countries. Free to air satellite broadcasting is an important medium for most German private channels, so to tailor programmes only for cable TV wouldn't be worthwhile. Generally, what you get on cable, you can also get on satellite (with the exception of regional/city TV stations).

Yep, all Premier League has the Sky commentary as the secondary option.

Champions League matches also carry English commentary (BBC, ITV, Sky) if the feed comes from one of those channels ie. it's a home game involving an English team.