Digital Television Introduced To Africa

[rpm]

http://www.mybroadband.co.za/nephp/?m=show&id=617

 

[doobiwan]

LOL

Brilliant, Senegal and Mauritius launch before Telkom. I love it ~R200 for the set top unit / access point - compare that to DSTV!!

 

[werner]

I think the analog switch off date for south africa is 2010, which isnt that far away....
for everybody to get a new set top box or new tv that doesnt leave much time.

 

[kaspaas]

Will this be "radiowave digital" or Telkom based cable digital?

 

[FireFLi]

Well that leaves us 4 years to save for a new TV

 

[mccrack]

Being South Africa, you're going too need to save for 4 years to afford the new tv

 

[The_Unbeliever]

To quote our dear friend Steve White :

Original article can be found at : http://www.mybroadband.co.za/nephp/?m=show&id=617

Steven White, Telkom executive for Product Development told ITWeb that triple play was an obvious step in the light of developments in Europe. "We have deals with M-Net and MultiChoice in terms of content provision and aim to offer DVD-quality broadcasts and video and music-on-demand, downloaded from a content server."

He says a big challenge remains as far as the billing system goes, but Telkom will work on this as the trial * which will be free for participants * progresses. "We had hoped to begin the trials earlier, but obviously we are dealing with a lot of content and a large delivery system, so there have been the occasional teething problems, but the trials will certainly begin soon," he says.

Yes, and giving people grief with their 3Gig caps seem to be their aim...

Now I am really, really confused. According to Telkom, it is considered "abuse" if you use ADSL for multimedia and the such, but here they are planning to provide multimedia services...

Unless they're planning to raise the 3Gig cap limit?

Regards

Librarian

 

[RichardP]

Digital Terrestrial TV

Yo Squires,

Sentech has had a beta transmitter doing DVB-T running since about 2000 in Joburg. For all who dont know, Its digital TV using normal land based antenna. I dont know why it hasnt rolled out but it reeks of ICASA not knowing how to license Timeslots on one frequency and how to make more cash

Richard

http://www.sadiba.co.za/pages/news/digital1.htm

http://www.mybroadband.co.za/nephp/?m=show&id=617

 

[doobiwan]

From what I can tell this is very much just "cable" tv over DSL, rather than video on demand, which would be way cooler.

As far as bandwidth limiting goes, I'm guessing they're do the shaping thing: TV delivery ports are unshaped and uncapped (and encrypted - hence the new set top box), everything else throttled to your current rate and cap.

It absolutely stinks that this had to be done by Telkom and not MWeb (being part of multichoice) The competition board should go beserk.

*sigh*

 

[regardtv]

A few things....

The Video over DSL trials run in a seperate pipe on your line so it has no impact on your internet access and it's 3GB cap...

As the the DVB-T gear .. yip .. a fair bit of testing, but how do you get every tv subscriber to switch to a dvb-t receiver ... we all know government ain't gonna subsidise it... Main + on the dvb-t side is the effecient use of spectrum and the possibility of using the dvb-t for broadband data distribution.

 

[kaspaas]

A few things....

......

As the the DVB-T gear .. yip .. a fair bit of testing, but how do you get every tv subscriber to switch to a dvb-t receiver ... we all know government ain't gonna subsidise it... Main + on the dvb-t side is the effecient use of spectrum and the possibility of using the dvb-t for broadband data distribution.

The way to do it is to make the service available in paralel to the old analogue systems.

People will then start purchasing the new equipment...

 

[doobiwan]

. . . Or you open it up as a paid for service and go into competition with DSTV. I don't think many people think of it as such because it's a luxury, but DSTV is also an abusive monopoly.

Almost every house in the states has cable or satelite, but DSTV remains the domain of the wealthy in ZA.

I shouldn't have to decide between DSTV or ADSL when I budget.