An international perspective on Digital TV

We should follow broadly along the lines of the Finnish pattern.

People without licences can watch the parliamentary channel, the learning programs and news. This is funded out of tax revenue.
With a TV licence, funds to be shared amongst the SABC, eTV and community TV stations, you get pretty much what you see now.
Pay extra for special interest channels.
 
Seen as this is an "international perspective" allow me to share my experience in Australia. Here we have analog, digital and HD free-to-air channels. When we got here we got given an old SD STB by someone who was upgrading to a HD STB. Our 72cm Sony CRT TV that we brought from South Africa couldn't pick up HD so we could only receive the analog and digital signals. Last week we bought a 46" Sony LCD Z5500 200Hz TV (for A$2399 with a free Playstation 3). Now we dont need the STB so in the bin it went.

We get 11 free channels (ABC1, ABC2, ABC3, SBSONE, SBSTWO, Seven, 7TWO, Nine, GO!, Ten, ONE). These are all transmitted in Analog, Digital and HD. Then in addition to these there are regional versions of some of the above channels (Prime, WIN, NBN, GWN and Southern Cross Television.) All are transmitted in Analog and Digital. Regional TV basically is the national TV with local adverts and local news.

All of the above is absotely free. There is no such thing as a Television licence in Australia.

The HD digital TV is awesome quality. You cant actually believe such quality is being picked up by the rickety old TV aerial on my roof. The digital channels (both SD and HD) have an EPG exactly the same as DSTV. In fact Digital TV feels like the same experience as watching DSTV with info bars, story lines, program guides, next show info etc. So digital basically gives free-to-air TV all the electronic benfits of pay TV.

But the really nice thing is the free to air carry all the latest episodes of the various series. If you want reruns and repeats then you need to get Pay TV like Foxtel, iSelect, Austar, Optus TV, Telstra TV etc.

Once you have experienced digital you just cant go back to analog. It really is like watching a Black and White TV versus Colour. The difference and experience is that great.
 
Telkomhater said:
Once you have experienced digital you just cant go back to analog. It really is like watching a Black and White TV versus Colour. The difference and experience is that great.
Click to expand...

:erm: That would depend on SABC. It's not digital or HD that makes it great. It's the broadcaster who knows how to make use of it. Something important ATM is standards. For instance, letterbox on a 4:3 broadcast is not 16:9. Pillarboxed 4:3 content on a 16:9 broadcast is crap. Blowing up crappy footage to HD is not HD. These things happen. I hope they won't happen in SA. These people need to be agreeing on standard.
 
ldmelsa said:
:erm: That would depend on SABC. It's not digital or HD that makes it great. It's the broadcaster who knows how to make use of it. Something important ATM is standards. For instance, letterbox on a 4:3 broadcast is not 16:9. Pillarboxed 4:3 content on a 16:9 broadcast is crap. Blowing up crappy footage to HD is not HD. These things happen. I hope they won't happen in SA. These people need to be agreeing on standard.
Click to expand...

DSTv still does pan & scan where they 'shrink' widescreen content to a normal 4:3 image cutting off stuff on the left and right. This annoys me to no end :mad: Why can't just leave the content in it's original format?
 
Asia has the same problem as us? :confused: Maybe they are also getting a 1% tax increase to buy the non-income group DVB-T settopbox (STB). :o
 
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