10 July 2009
Our television aerials are soon going to be replaced with digital TV in the next couple of years.
In November last year we reported that digital TV would be arriving in South Africa by the end of 2011. The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) has now finalised the draft regulations for South African digital TV, and has asked for the arrival date of digital TV to be reviewed.
ICASA has allocated three dividends of the digital TV to different broadcasters within South Africa. Each dividend is called a multiplex, and is able to transmit several different channels. According to BusinessDay, SABC has been allocated 100% of the first multiplex, and may receive up to thirteen new channels, whilst etv has been allocated 60% of the second multiplex.
M-Net will received half of a third multiplex reserved for paying subscribers, subject to the broadcaster switching over to digital decoders within a year. M-Net had originally requested a full multiplex, yet ICASA’s allocation will be reviewed once the switch-over to digital TV has taken place. ICASA councilor, Robert Nkuna, told the Daily Dispatch Online that M-Net will be able to apply for more channels only at the end of the switch-over.
However, the switch-over to digital TV may not hit its original deadline of November 2011. This is due to some technical challenges posed by digital TV, including making the decoders affordable and available to all South Africans.
Creamer Media’s Engineering News reports that ICASA is only expecting the dual illumination period of both digital and analogue signals to end in by 2013. Analogue TV will no longer be supported internationally after 2015, so this gives South Africa two years to catch up. It is likely that costs will be higher for broadcasters broadcasting on both digital and analogue TV, but Nkuna states that South Africa’s movement to digital TV is running smoothly and that we are further ahead than other countries in the region.
