In a seminar on the business of Digital TV, held in Bogotá, Colombia, international experts in the field raised the opportunities that DTV represents for content generators and for those who offer value-added services on this platform.
The meeting discussed the regulatory challenges and challenges that the development of digital TV may face in aspects such as the reorganization of the location of frequencies and the use of the profits generated; the migration from analog to digital TV; and the introduction of new services such as mobile TV.
On the issue of decoders and access facilities for users, Juan Pablo Torres, director of Mobile Broadcast Business Development of Alcatel-Lucent Iberia and Americas, said that Colombia made the indicated decision to modify the DVB standard and move to MPEG-4, although he accepted that there is a short-term problem in the availability of this type of decoders.
"The technological challenge is largely overcome. Europe made a mistake in the DTV implementation process by not contemplating the adoption of MPEG-4 earlier. Nowadays it is more expensive to move from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4, than to develop encoders for the latter. However, this experience served to solve 5 or 8 years of setbacks and today we are sure that the countries that adopted the DVB standard will not repeat them, "said Torres.
According to Torres, MPEG-4 decoders will be on the market in the short term since the demand is created, and it is only necessary for the suppliers of the industry to start working on it.
This seminar was organized by the Telecommunications Research Center of Colombia, CINTEL, and served as a preamble to the theme of Digital Media: Contents and Services that will be developed at the Central Academic Forum of the ANDICOM Congress 2009, between October 28 and 30 of this year.
