- Monday, 16 November 2009
- INQ Mobile
- RSS
If tunes were human beings, that singer would be a serial killer
Colombia strikes DVB blow to US standard
THE OTHERWISE US-friendly government of Colombia has struck a blow to American ambitions in Latin America, by surprisingly selecting the European DVB standard, against all predictions.
After an unprecedented six-hour meeting, Communications Minister Maria del Rosario Guerra – whose last name in Spanish ironically means war – declared defeat for the Americans by announcing the country selected DVB-T as the standard of choice for the country's over-the-air digital TV broadcasts. The broadcasts won't start until the second half of 2010, so there's no rush to start buying DVB-T STBs, said the government.
Until yesterday, all predictions pointed towards the US ATSC, given the close and cozy relationship between recent Colombian governments and the United States. Just last week, Colombian business magazine Portafolio said the Americans had all the chances of winning due to the "geopolitical ties" between Colombia and the US.
It said, "besides the technical and economic aspecs of the decision, the President will consider the geo-political impact of this decision, that is, how this will affect the strategic relations of the Country in the international space."
Nevertheless, the Japanese and the Chinese DMB-T/H never had many hopes. Colombia's La Patria titled a story 'Japan doubts of Colombia's objectivity in selection process' but then provided no substance to back that claim.
Portafolio news magazine talks about unprecedented lobbying by the involved parties saying, "Never before a technology selection by the State has generated so much lobbying by countries, multinationals, and SIGs as in the selection of the over the air digital television standard".
Now, Colombian officials are talking about the 'domino effect' this will have upon countries in the region which have yet to choose their digital TV standard from among the four major players: ATSC, DVB, the Japanese / Brazilian ISDB-T International, and the Chinese DMB-T/H.
The initial investment to get DTV rolling in Colombia is measured at about $150M. Colombia's migration period towards digital TV is expected to take around 10 years before analogue transmissions are shut off.
Like we said over here a year and a half ago, it's a big game of risk, with each of the four players actively trying to switch the undecided countries to their own team's colour on the World Map. As of right now, in Latin America, the US has only conquered Mexico with ATSC.
The Europeans claim two victories with Colombia and the tiny republic of Uruguay, and the Japanese conquered Brazil, some say with Argentina and Chile high on the list of potential followers.
We will continue reporting on this interesting horse race, as Chile is the next expected player to announce its move.
Stay tuned to the INQUIRER, whatever your DTV standard is. µ
Share this:
ShareBusiness Intelligence Software
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Enterprise Accounting Software
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Enterprise Systems Management
Good news. Australia too uses the DVB-T standard so this means TVs and STBs should fall in price due to greater production worldwide.
Well, I suppose we are following, unless Chávez decides to go with the chinese.
After all of years of prep & hype, with NO change in image or quality of signal, this over air broadcast stuff seems like magnetic hammer pounding, pounding at ones senses.

Honestly, with so many choices, simply ending over air TV broadcast would have been best.
drashek
"Colombia has struck a blow to American ambitions in Latin America"

and

"declared defeat for the Americans"

makes Fernando sound like he thinks Americans really give two flying fvcks whether some other country uses a different standard or not.

Take it from an American Fernando, no one here cares.
Nice round-up. Few people were expecting it. I guess ISDB-T and DVB-T will 'share' South America, where as ATSC will be 'successful' in the Caribbean (except Cuba, of course).

Just two little clarifications: Portafolio is an economic newspaper, not a magazine. And the La Patria article is actually a wire from local news agency Colprensa, whose full version is available at http://www.larepublica.com.co//archivos/EMPRESAS/2008-08-28/japon-cuestiona-objetividad-del-proceso-de-tv-digital_52549.php
I'm not sure how much of this is a financial deal win, and how much is good old politics.

In the history of TV formats, it's been a mixture of both.

NTSC was the first method of encoding colour, but did result in the wonderful hue control, and some very surreal colours. Which is exactly the reason why the UK held back and continued working on the system to make the colour stable, this resulted in PAL a few years later.
The French feared their own TV industry (which I assume spent most of the time at Lunch or on holiday like they do today), would loose out to mass production from other countries, so decided on their own system called SECAM, which did have the nice feature of multiple audio features.
At this point the Eastern block were considering a system, and obviously wouldn't want their poor oppressed people being able to see anything nice, so they certainly didn't want the same TV system as on the other side of the wall... Scratch PAL then, and they wouldn't want them to see anything from Japan on their Eastern shores, so scratch NTSC. Plus of course it was the system of the evil consumerist society.
This left the obvious choice of SECAM. It wasn't used by anyone except the French and their colonies, which were safely far enough from them to avoid anyone seeing anything they shouldn't.

So my immediate thought is the Colombian government probably like the idea of being able to restrict what their population can see, and not accidentally letting them see the wobbly walls of US soap operas!

I don't blame them to be honest!
"...Communications Minister Maria del Rosario Guerra – whose last name in Spanish ironically means war..." <-- SOOOO childish.... Grow up!!