A ‘best of Belgium’ French-language TV channel is now transmitting on Astra (19.2 deg East). RTBF-SAT went on air last week with a schedule of news, variety, sport and current affairs programming. RTBF-Sat will be digitally broadcast and unencrypted (“free to air”). “It will bring to Belgians abroad, and other French-speaking viewers interested in our programmes, round-the-clock programming all produced in-house,” said a statement. RTBF-Sat is being digitally encoded at the Reyers facility, then relayed via a telecoms link to the Astra uplink at Betzdorf. Signal bandwidth is 4.5 Mb/sec. Technical costs of some 30m Belgian francs (750,000m euros/$650,000) have been allocated to the project.