BATTLE IS ON FOR DIGITAL, MOBILE TV PLATFORM
By MELVIN G. CALIMAG
June 11, 2009, 3:24pm
As the Philippines makes its leap to the digital broadcast era, a ferocious battle between Europe and Japan is transpiring in the background as they push for their respective digital video standards in the country.
Europe, led by France, is promoting a digital TV platform called DVB, short for Digital Video Broadcast. Its mobile TV version, meanwhile, is called DVB-H, the last letter stands for Handheld.
Japan, a technology powerhouse whose economy second only after the US, is advocating a standard known as ISDB, which is an acronym for Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting.
The stakes are high in the game since the winning platform would bring in the profits to manufacturers of broadcast equipment such as TVs, receivers, and set-up boxes.
On the side of Europe, there are the likes of French firm Alcatel-Lucent, Dutch electronics giant Philips, and Finnish phone maker Nokia. Japan, on the other hand, is protecting the interests of its local brands Sony, Panasonic, and Sharp, to name a few.
The task of determining which digital TV standard to approve rests on the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), although the policy directions will come from Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT). The NTC, a quasi-judicial body, is under the technical supervision of the CICT.
CICT chair Ray Anthony Roxas-Chua III, in a recent conversation with the officers of IT media group CyberPress, said the NTC and the CICT have not arrived at any decision yet and are still carefully studying the competing standards.
Sources from the private and public sectors said representatives of the Japanese electronics industry have been very aggressive lately in campaigning to have the Philippines adopt the ISDB standard.
A high government executive who requested anonymity said the Japanese camp has, in fact, proposed an offer that the government will find hard to resist – that they (Japan) will convert the facilities of television stations from analogue to digital for free. The catch, of course, is that the digital TV format will be based on the ISDB platform.
Officials said the Japanese standard’s edge comes in the fact that the Philippines has been using the NTSC analog standard which Japan also uses.
Thus, under the ISDB standard, television sets in the country would just need to purchase set-up boxes to receive digital TV signals because the platform runs on the same frequency as NTSC. Furthermore, ordinary mobile phones that have TV capability can also get digital TV signals.
The DVB group, however, branded as “rubbish” the argument that because the Philippines is using NTSC, the country should therefore use Japan’s ISDB platform.
“The NTSC is an analog standard. What we’re talking here is digital TV, which is entirely a new area,” said John Bigeni, DVB Forum representative for Asia and the Pacific, at a seminar Wednesday organized by the French Embassy in Quezon City.
Bigeni pointed out that ISDB has been adopted only in Japan in the Asia Pacific, unlike the DVB which has been extensively deployed in the region, particularly in Southeast Asia where the Philippines is a part of.
The executive also said that under the DVB platform, digital TV signals can be picked up using set-up boxes that cost as cheap as $25. “Japanese TV products usually integrate these set-up boxes or converters inside the unit, so you have to buy a new unit to receive digital TV,” Bigeni said.
A local company which is intently observing the developments in this sector is Smart Communications, which has invested billions in its mobile TV service that runs on the European standard DVB-H.
