Digital TV STBs will be expensive

The same way it gets from the tower to your TV: via radio waves. Towers are essentially repeaters.




Edit: In the few places where a wired solution is required, those links are there already in order to offer analogue TV services.
 
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Even more maintenance and expenditures ... junk it and it won't even affect most people with TV cause we already have satellite.
 
I love refuting your arguments... just to watch you change your argument basis.
So far in this thread: Satellite is better -> DVB-S STB is cheaper --> Satellite is cheaper --> Sat Infrastructure is cheaper --> well it'll break... and anyway I've got Satellite. :D

Can't you admit for once that you actually don't know wtf you're talking about?
 
Without the numbers you can't refute anything really. Looking at the way government is handling this situation right now it is clear that the total cost of getting the infrastructure in place for camp DVB-T is getting bigger and bigger.

Can you refute that?
 
Compared to what exactly? You haven't actually put forward any argument that holds water so far.
 
Compared to a mature and fast growing user base of DVB-S users. Both Multichoice and Sentech already broadcast via PAS7/10. This is costs they are already paying and they do not have to upgrade 100s of repeaters nationwide or subsidize receivers for it. Its already there and ready to be used anywhere in South Africa. An added bonus is they that no one is debating if they should change from DVB-S to something else. Add to that the DVB-S2 services of TopTV via SES Astra and you have an affordable variety of well established satellite services. Not some in-the-pipeline crap that cost a fortune.

Or did all of that cost a kazillion rand it its much cheaper to debate about how nice DVB-T will be if we get it working?
I may be an idiot but indeed I am no fool.
 
the satellite makes more sense as a migration path has come up on this forum quite a few times and never has a single argument against the proper deployment of satellite as a default entry point for tv services. Something that amazes me is the assumption that you need to properly install a dish for each house on the system. You don't you need a properly setup dish feeding to multiple STBs. 1 satellite dish properly setup can provide feed for an entire informal settlement and whats more the costs you are saving on not broadcasting for a few month can quite possibly cover the installation labour costs. Not only are you opening up spectrum but you are systematically seeing infrastructure improvements - if VC or MTN who as an ECN are able to and as evil companies want to have more spectrum are properly roped they can lay provisioning cable and conduit for an informal settlement area [basically you have a point which has the prepaid electricity connection, a dsl connection and a cable to the satellite put on erfs] or you can auction the to be freed spectrum and pay the proceeds directly to local government for infrastructure development and require same to ensure access to signal for STB.

In high density areas solutions providing data and video on a cable link should happen - if you have fibre to the curb
 
I think the only viable counter argument would be if we had nothing to begin and we had to decide whether to go forward with DVB-S or DVB-T. In such a case the cost of blasting a satellite into space and getting the system as a whole off the ground could be a little too ambitious as opposed to going with a terrestrial service. However in South Africa we have a scenario of being so far behind that we are actually ahead.

Our terrestrial system was out dated for far too long when they started the first satellite service in SA. Back then SABC was on the analogue AstraSAT system (had one of those) and DStv was DVB-S. A few years down the line the SABC switched to the Vivid digital system (still have one of those). This year we got TopTV. So we have a well established market for satellite TV, it can be extended to all households for a lot less than it cost to switch to digital terrestrial broadcasts.
 
Will they work, good question, indeed they will I use one when I travel into the middle east and europe and it is more or less my only source of entertainment when you are on the go.

Mantis said:
What about those DVBT antennas they sell on BidorBuy, eBay, etc?

Would they work?

Actually just bought one and awaiting delivery
Click to expand...
 
Those are just high gain (Yagi in most cases) UHF antennas. You still need a DVB receiver. In some places Yagi is actually worse off that a big old grid antenna, especially if you are behind a hill with no LOS to the sender. I learned this the hard way by spending a couple or hundred on a awesome Yagi but ended up using a big cheap grid.
 
Rouxenator said:
Well that sucks for Sentech. You can get a DStv decover for R400, dish and install will still not push the price above R1000 and then you are set for live. Add in R210 per year for an EasyView subscription and you are on your way to enjoy DVB-S bliss.
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Maybe .... if you like utterly rubbish image quality. Before we even consider going all DVB-S, we have to force-upgrade the whole of DSTV to an h.264 codec. At the moment, my analogue SABC signal has much, much better image quality than DSTV, which is so full of compression artefacts that it is painful to watch. (Yes, I know the HD channels / decoders support h.264, but does Multichoice have the guts to drop support for MPEG2?)

I have seen samples of the DVB-T DTT broadcasts (5 Mbps h.264, iirc), and I could not see any artefacts at all.
 
Rouxenator said:
Compared to a mature and fast growing user base of DVB-S users. Both Multichoice and Sentech already broadcast via PAS7/10. This is costs they are already paying and they do not have to upgrade 100s of repeaters nationwide or subsidize receivers for it. Its already there and ready to be used anywhere in South Africa. An added bonus is they that no one is debating if they should change from DVB-S to something else. Add to that the DVB-S2 services of TopTV via SES Astra and you have an affordable variety of well established satellite services. Not some in-the-pipeline crap that cost a fortune.

Or did all of that cost a kazillion rand it its much cheaper to debate about how nice DVB-T will be if we get it working?
I may be an idiot but indeed I am no fool.
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Exactly, somebody said earlier that satellite was expensive, but either way, since Sentech / Government is already broadcasting SABC 1,2,3 and e.TV on the PAS7/10 platform, those costs have already been covered I assume, using our television license and tax revenues.

What the regulator should do is force them to make those channels Free To Air (un-encrypted) like they did in the UK, where the DTT roll-out has been less than successful. At least that gives the consumer a choice of platform and will improve competition in the space i.e. drive down the price of set top boxes (whether satellite, cable or DTT). Does anyone see ICASA doing their job in this instance? Of course not, that would be far too much to expect and it would mean Zimbabwe will get those channels for free too, can't have that!

Just look at the UK DTT coverage map to date (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_terrestrial_television_in_the_United_Kingdom) and they started in 1998!

Given the DoC's / SADC's prevarication over standards and the geographical challenges facing ZA, the probable cost of STB's etc. I don't expect the DTT roll-out in ZA to be anything other than an unmitigated disaster costing a huge amount of money with total lack of concern for the general public in mind. However, I am pretty sure it will be a triumph for ANC cronyism, tenderpreneurship, nepotism, protectionism and corruption that have become a hallmark of so many public enterprises in the last few years. Welcome to the rainbow nation! Eish!
 
fvdbergh said:
I have seen samples of the DVB-T DTT broadcasts (5 Mbps h.264, iirc), and I could not see any artefacts at all.
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True - the H.264 streams they have on DTT delivers much better quality than the MPEG-2 streams that was cutting edge back in 1995. But you can have H.264 via DVB-S(2) like TopTV does. MonoChoice just has to do the upgrade.

I doubt that the DTT STBs will undercut R600 :
MultiChoice recently reduced the price of its ‘Standard DSD1131 Decoder’ - which includes installation and a dish - to R599. This is R50 less than the previous price of R649.
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If you take infrastructure costs into account DTT is one big cash toilet.
 
just checking something (which may explain why there is a push to DTT instead of simply going to DVB-S)
Please correct me on anything thats wrong with this statement:
Sentech is responsible for terrestrial broadcasting in South Africa for SABC, e-TV and M-Net. It has a monopoly on terrestrial broadcasting and does not use any other platforms to broadcast content. Multichoice and TopTV are licenced to distribute content via satellite and there are other licence holders to enter the satellite sphere.
To migrate to DTT will require giving Sentech lots of money whereas to migrate to satellite would render Sentech redundant except possibly for terrestrial radio broadcasting.
 
was anyone expecting them to be cheap? Best bet is to get DSTV installed (R550 all inclusive) and then take the EasyView bouquet.
 
Yes, Sentech owns the terrestrial broadcast platform, but they also have capacity on PAS 7/10 along side DStv. TopTV is on SES Astra which is a different satellite. As far as licenses go I am not sure, but if you think of the cost of switching a whole terrestrial network of senders to digital it can't be cheap.
 
well if Sentech were to simply indicate that it is abandoning terrestrial broadcasting as being unviable then the entire issue would be a non-issue. Sentech can save money as it switches off repeaters and use these savings to fund sat-ifying (mind the pun) consumers. The spectrum freed up can be auctioned or rolled out by Sentech for data services (assuming they can get it right this time)

I simply see the whole debate as one about who government should give money to as part of keeping Sentech afloat rather than transforming Sentech - and possibly actually disolving it as unnecessary in the converged world.
 
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