[loikujhygthj]

$50 for basic cable here, another $50 for extras (discovery channel and comedy network) HD and movies get a lot more expensive. Then sport - ouch.

There is only one cable provider and it has a monopoly. I just watched TV on the net after the companies intro $10/month offer ran out.

[jules]

That's all in the standard package here. €16,45/month for 60 channels, including discovery channel, comedy central and sport. The most popular channels come in HD for free, but to get Discovery, National Geographic and History in HD you need to pay extra (€4/month). Maybe we pay the difference with taxes?

[ugh]

The monopoly thing is similar, the one big cable provider claims, though, that it is only very small compared to the big ISPs with their newfangled IPTV offers :)

That difference to the US is altogether really strange. You can buy additional stuff in Germany now, but there just doesn’t seem to be any original content (like Mythbusters) above and beyond all the soccer stuff.

But private TV stations are also a relatively new thing in Germany – the first one got started in the early eighties – and our cable network was privatized only a little more than ten years ago. Will be interesting to see how that all develops.