The Puzzle of Television Digital DTV in Latin America has not yet found who I put it together. Despite the multiple uses and their services Innovators presage a great revolution, the countries of the region, for reasons mainly of an economic and political nature, have been elusive to commit to a timetable for their implantation and each one sees it with very dissimilar degrees of urgency, some with frank indifference, such as Colombia, and others, such as Mexico, quite hastily.
The decision of some countries, such as Venezuela, for example, on the DTV standard Digital that they will adopt, depends in large part on what a decides a giant like Brazil, which is analyzing the feasibility of a own system or adopt a hybrid between the European DVB and the Japanese ISDB, as reported by the Argentine expert in telecommunications, Juan Carlos Guidobono.
In turn, the government of the The United States, which tries to impose as a continental standard the ATSC standard, has pronounced on the adoption it has made Mexico. This significantly increases the odds to establish a common digital television standard for everything America, said Robert Graves, president of the ATSC Forum. A common norm across the hemisphere will translate into more equipment from more suppliers and at lower prices, which accelerate the transition to digital television across the world region.
Brazil
Meanwhile, DTV in Brazil is a personal commitment of the
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has already said he wanted to
watch the 2006 World Cup on a digital screen and its
Minister of Science and Technology works to please him.
Since the 70s, Brazil has assumed a leadership in technological matters with the purpose of become an exporter, and within that plan has come developing its own systems in the it area and now it is proposed to do it on television. In design and creation of its DTV system that country has invested 22.7 million dollars, after concluding that neither the system North American ATSC, neither the European DVB, nor the Japanese ISDB respond to the needs of Brazil, and consequently everything suggests that it could adopt a hybrid system.
In any case, the system that finally adopt Brazil must respond to the characteristics and specific needs of your market, this is to prioritize the high definition and mobile TV is possible, as some operators are interested in serving millions of potential viewers who spend many hours involved in traffic congestion.
A few days ago, at the end of November 2005, Argentina and Brazil signed an agreement to cooperation to establish a single digital TV system it is expected that later Chile will join that agreement. The idea is to advocate a unique Digital TV pattern for all of Latin America, in a kind of Mercosur of the telecommunications.
Argentina's position at the It is time to sign that agreement is that the standard is adopted by whose use has to be paid less royalties abroad and which attracts more companies willing to invest in the local manufacture of hardware, such as TVs and set-top boxes, has published the Buenos Aires newspaper El Clarín.
The decision of the standard in Brazil, after several postponements, must occur sooner of February 10, 2006, when President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will know and endorse the projects prepared by almost a hundred consortia that have been investigating the subject.
Those who defend the idea that Brazil has a standard of its own, they think that will guarantee a domestic market for local industry and eventually for other markets, in case other countries adopt it. By your Part, detractors believe that a Brazilian standard of its own it would give a lot of power to the national industrialists, who they could set prices above the international average.
Mexico decided fast
Mexico is the latin American country that has been at the
avant-garde in DTV. Since 1998, when Ernesto's government
Zedillo granted him a special permit, Televisa has come
experimentally broadcasting programs in high definition
on Channel 48, in the UHF band, for the Valley of Mexico.
In that same year, the State delivered in concession more than 1,300 licenses in UHF, which currently broadcast with technologies compatible with the North American atSC standard.
To date, seven years later and after investing more than 20 million dollars in equipment for Produce high definition signal, Televisa is ready to make the technological leap and migrate on a large scale to Television Digital, but the popularization of this technology is found slowed down by the economic conditions of the population.
In July 2004, with two years of delay in its own schedule, Mexico adopted the system North American ATSC free-to-air television. And if the new schedule, no later than December 31, 2006 three larger cities, such as Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey, as well as some communities Along the border, they will have commercial DTV services.
Chile, a long wait
In Chile, in 1997, the National Television Council and the
Undersecretariat of Telecommunications (SUBTEL), the agency
technical regulator under the Ministry of Transport and
Telecommunications, began to study the introduction of the
Digital Terrestrial Television. As a result, the
Green Paper setting out the criteria and principles
for the introduction of digital terrestrial television in
Chile and the design of a state policy on migration
to the DTV.
Analyzed the impact it would produce the implementation of DTV in Chilean society, the government provided that by December 2000 at the latest it should be adopted the technical standard and immediately proceeded to gradually introduce the technology throughout the territory national. Chilean broadcasters have recommended it to their government adopt the ATSC standard and other countries in the region are analyzing its possible adoption.
The government authorized the use of experimentally the channels adjacent to 8, 10 and 12, which were being used in analog transmissions. This led to experimental transmissions with the system American, which were suspended once they expired permissions.
However, at the end of the year 2000 the government decided to postpone the adoption of the standard to the waiting for further studies and the technological definition of other countries in the region. Analysts and experts believe that the Chilean government could be waiting for the development of the Brazil-Argentina agreement to adopt a single standard.
Argentina, decision
joint with Brazil
In 1997, the Secretariat of Communications of Argentina undertook
the study of available DTV systems and for the purpose
created the Study Commission on Digital Television Systems,
which was converted in 1988 into an Advisory Committee on
Digital Television.
A year later, the government of Carlos Menem adopted the North American ATSC standard, with the argument that the bandwidth was coincident with the Argentine, that there were already receivers available for his commercialization in the international market and that the system European DVB was not yet consolidated, becoming one of the first four countries in the world to decide on the American standard.
From that moment on, increased authorizations to broadcast signals DTV experiments across the country, which continued with some regularity until mid-2002.
Private operators started with its experimental broadcasts. In September 1998, the Canal 13 de Buenos Aires (Grupo Clarín) made the first broadcast of High Definition Digital Television. That year the government provided for the assignment of experimental frequencies to current licensees of free-to-air television for three years and released the frequencies of the spectrum that analog television did not use.
Currently the government Argentina revises its 1998 determination to adopt the model North American digital and is in talks with Brazil, trying to make a joint decision. So today Argentina has not defined a timetable for the migration of the analog to digital television.
The indifference of
Colombia
For now, in Colombia Digital Television has no history and
it is just a statement in a paragraph of the Development Plan
2002-2007 of the National Television Commission - CNTV. To the
Columnist Guillermo Santos wrote in the middle of
year in the newspaper El Tiempo: the Development Plan
of the Television that the CNTV presented a few years ago
reference to digital television in an almost negligible way and
dedicates a single paragraph to it, the succinct content of which only says that
it's important to start thinking about it.
And the CNTV still believes that you have to start thinking about DTV. The backwardness of this country in this theme was revealed when in a work meeting held a few weeks ago with the National Electronics Commission and Communications, of the Colombian Association of Electrical Engineers and ACIEM Mechanics, the director of the CNTV, Jorge Figueroa Clausen: The first thing to do is organize a series of forums to discuss the topic from different perspectives.
But behind the back of the CNTV, the cell phone operators, according to the service Specialized online TopCom, they intend to offer the TV service to its users within a short time and when this happens, TopCom asks, will the Commission have National Television competition to regulate the networks of telephony or the transmissions that are made by them?
The CNTV still does not wake up. One official of that entity stated that the adoption of the digital television in Colombia does not yet have a very panorama Of course. Its implementation basically depends on two factors. The first concerns transmission systems. The Current TV operators must make a change of the traditional analog system for television transmission to digital system. Acquiring digital technology implies a economic investment so high that many operators for now do not they can do it. The second factor is related to the viewer and their purchasing power, because the new Digital TVs have an approximate cost in the three thousand dollars, a price that is not available to the consumer Colombian average.
According to the CNTV, not being able to the viewer easily accesses the new receivers, the operators would have no one to take the digital signal to, and before a change of technology that would represent for them such costs they would need to secure a market to which offer you that digital product. The economic conditions of the market are not given then to have soon in Colombia, the new digital television.
However, private initiative took a step forward in the second half of the year, when the subscription television operator TV Cable, from Bogotá, inaugurated its DTV service for subscribers. It's called High End and it's a service package that costs a little over $100 monthly (230,000 Colombian pesos) and includes 134 channels of television (30 of them digital), 50 music and connection to Internet of 1,000 Kbps. 15 of the 30 digital channels are digitally produced. The rest corresponds to programs analogically recorded and subsequently converted to language digital, explains Enter magazine.
Although the cost of receivers digital is high, it is possible to adapt a converter at home to receive DTV signals and switch them to analog format, so that it is understood by the old TV.
Thus, ending 2005 the region is about to decide on the DTV standard to adopt, and in the determination of each they have specific weight political reasons. Anyway, one of the biggest expectations for 2006 are borne by Nokia, the company Finnish cell phone manufacturer, which will launch large scale mobile phones suitable for receiving television, music and multimedia entertainment options, as announced by the President and Chief Operating Officer, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo.
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