As someone who also has a mini antenna sitting uselessly next to his computer, I've been led to believe that it's because the regional cable TV operator has such a high market penetration that there's opposition to going back to a "broadcast" system, what with all the rugged hills and "stuff" (i.e. reluctance to invest in terrestrial infrastructure when existing cable can carry digital info).

I spotted a pile of the TVMinis in the local Apple store when I went in today to try and find a European cable for my iBook (to save me having to waste so much space with a big English plug and adaptor).

After managing to glean from the salesman's long, speedy, German reply, that it would cost me at least 30Euro, I thought I'd give it a miss. But then I thought to ask about the TVMinis sitting on the shelf to see if they knew any more about whether/when they should work here. He told me they don't work at present, but may do soon. No wonder they had so many of these things left on the shelves :)

The Germans don't seem to have gone for digital in a big way. They are woefully behind on DAB rollout (and associated content diversification) in many parts of the country too.

Actually I think it also has to do with satellite stuff. Unlike in the UK, most satellite TV is free in this country, meaning that a huge number of Germans receive all the channels they want via satellite (in addition to the huge number receiving them by cable). Why would anyone want to go back to terrestrial, the least reliable of the technologies?

Saxony has had an interesting policy on this. According to my sources (although I don't actually own a TV), they "changed over" to DVB-T in the Leipzig region at the end of last year. That is, they switched DVB-T on, and switched much of the analogue off, all around the same time. I think it's a cultural thing not to need or expect changeover periods. Lots of people who didn't know what was going on were left without pictures.