[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.