Nagravision, an independent provider of value-added content protection solutions, will provide the conditional access system (CAS) for the new Tivù Sat, the free-to-air (FTA) satellite service jointly owned by Italian broadcasters RAI, Mediaset, and Telecom Italia Media. 

Scheduled for market introduction in June of 2009, the free service will be offered to all households unable to receive the digital terrestrial television (DTT) FTA channels during and after the analog terrestrial switch off that is planned for completion by the end of 2012. Channels available on the new Tivù Sat STB are the same as the ones viewed free today on DTT STBs. Channels include RAI 1, RAI 2, RAI 3, RAI 4, CANALE 5, ITALIA 1, RETE 4, LA7, BOING, IRIS, along with many others. The Tivù Sat channels will be scrambled with Nagravision and decoded with smartcards to enforce the rights of sports and movies suppliers, thus ensuring that content shall not be viewed outside of the Italian territory. The estimate is that as many as two million families may require the Tivù Sat STB as a consequence of the analog switch off. The retail price of the smartcard, though not currently defined, is expected to remain low, while covering the cost of the cards. No subscription fees will be charged to the consumer and there is no expiration date on the smartcard.