KEYING TV’s FUTURE
July 1969. Astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped out of Apollo 11, becoming the first man to walk on the moon. The world, enthralled, watched the drama unfold on television.
Not so SA, which was still several years away from public TV. The National Party government would only, reluctantly, give the nod to start work on a single-station state-run service two years later, making SA one of the last countries to adopt the technology.
The reason for TV’s late arrival was, of course, ideological. The Nats saw the medium as a threat to the volk and taal. Albert Hertzog, minister of posts & telegraphs from 1959 until his split from the party in 1968 to form the Herstigte Nasionale Party, had stood as a bulwark against the introduction of what he disparagingly called the "little black box". "If at the present time you introduce television, you will pay for it with the end of the white man," the then-rightwing opposition party leader told a Cape Times interviewer in December 1969.
By then, though, even the most verkrampte government leaders were coming to realise that they could no longer resist the relentless march of progress. In 1971, Prime Minister B J Vorster gave the go-ahead to the SABC to begin piloting a national TV service, paving the way for its commercial launch 30 years ago this month, on January 5 1976.
South Africans were hooked from the start, despite often-amateurish programming and news bulletins bristling with apartheid propaganda.
Thankfully, a lot has changed in the past 30 years. Apartheid has collapsed and so has the National Party; the quality of TV content has improved markedly; and, gradually, competition between broadcasters is increasing, leading to more choice for consumers.
Technologically, however, little has changed since 1976. SA’s terrestrial TV network employs the same creaky analogue technology that was used to broadcast those early episodes of Wielie Walie, not to mention P W Botha’s occasional finger-wagging rages.
Even that, though, is finally set to change. In the next five years, TV will undergo a revolution that will change the way we view it, why we view it, when we view it and how we view it.
TV viewers of the future will be engaging with a technology that brings together the Internet, cellular telephony and new, more efficient broadcast networks. With this convergence of technologies we will be able to not only watch programmes but take control of the viewing experience. Such cutting-edge developments will completely transform television’s function and purpose by the end of this decade.
More immediately, it will draw companies such as Telkom, MTN, Vodacom and MultiChoice into competition for the first time.
Thanks to planned investments in new digital infrastructure and an opening of the market to greater competition, SA, for once, looks set to keep pace with the rest of the world in the advances in television.
Here’s what’s coming:
* Satellite TV will undergo a shake-up;
* Terrestrial TV – that received by ground-based aerials – is set for equally big changes;
* Telkom plans to deliver pay-TV through the same broadband digital subscriber lines it uses to provide customers with full-time Internet connections.
* DVB-H – a type of digital terrestrial TV modified for handheld devices – will deliver television to the next generation of cellular handsets and other devices.
* Personal video recorders (PVRs), such as the DStv unit introduced recently by MultiChoice, will enable viewers to pause, replay and store live programmes at will, and;
* Wall-mounted, high-definition, flat-panel TV screens will enable viewers in even modest homes to enjoy cinema-like viewing.
MultiChoice looks set to get its first meaningful competition in digital satellite TV, thanks to recent regulatory amendments by industry regulator Icasa. The SABC plans to launch a comprehensive digital satellite service this year to compete head-on with MultiChoice’s DStv. The SABC’s previous attempt at satellite TV, the analogue AstraSat service, failed. The public broadcaster is understood to be taking far more care in planning its second attempt. It is expected to detail its plans formally in the next few months.
Another company, Black Earth Communications, has also expressed an interest in launching a service. But it alleges its entry into the SA market has been frustrated by Sentech, which it says has denied it access to its digital satellite platform, known as Vivid. State-owned Sentech is a former division of the SABC and is working with the national broadcaster as the latter gears up to launch its pay-TV satellite service but denies strongly that this is the reason it turned away Black Earth Communications.
Whatever form it eventually takes, the new competition is to be welcomed, says MultiChoice Africa CEO Nolo Letele. He says there is room for more players in the market. He estimates that 2,5m of SA’s 7m TV households can afford pay-TV. DStv has about 1m customers. "You could bring in one or two additional operators [but] it’s not healthy to have too many," Letele says.
MultiChoice is unlikely to change its content dramatically to fend off new competitors. "Premium movies and sports are what drive pay-TV. That’s where our focus will stay."
Letele rejects criticism that he has left a big gap in the market by not tailoring products to the new black middle class. He says 30% of all new DStv subscribers are black and that much of its content – from soccer to music – appeals to the black market.
SA’s terrestrial broadcast network will be upgraded from analogue to digital over the next three years, which will require most consumers to have digital decoders (see story on page 22). This will free up frequency spectrum and allow new terrestrial TV competitors to be licensed. It could even result in SA getting its first spectrum-hungry high-definition terrestrial TV channel. The 2010 World Cup soccer in glorious high-definition? It’s not impossible.
Telkom, meanwhile, wants to start a pay-TV service using broadband digital subscriber lines by which it currently provides customers with an always-on Internet connection. The fixed-line operator is about to begin a six-month trial with Microsoft and Alcatel involving 300 customers (see page 20).
TV delivered over broadband, more commonly known as Internet Protocol TV or IPTV, will deliver levels of interactivity not possible with traditional broadcast networks. Consumers will have much greater control over what they watch and when they watch it. IPTV looks set to boom in the next few years thanks to huge investments worldwide by telecom operators and by some of the giants of the technology industry – Microsoft, Yahoo and Google.
Vodacom and MTN will also want a piece of the TV pie. DVB-H, digital terrestrial TV for handheld devices, will deliver television to the next generation of cellular handsets and other devices. MultiChoice is already testing such a network. The first DVB-H-ready devices will reach the market later this year.
Cellphone operators are also using their third-generation (3G) data networks for limited video streaming. A speedier version of 3G, being introduced this year by MTN and Vodacom, will make it possible to deliver higher-quality video content to handsets.
PVRs, such as the DStv unit introduced recently by MultiChoice, wi
ll change consumers’ viewing habits. With a built-in hard disk, it is possible to pause, rewind and fast-forward live TV. The PVR records the live video feed to its hard disk. When the viewer returns from a bathroom break, they simply continue the now near-live programme they were watching by un-pausing the device. Some PVRs will even let consumers skip advertising, though this feature has been disabled in MultiChoice’s unit, presumably so as not to alienate the advertising industry.
So, what impact will these new technologies have on the ordinary consumer? Perhaps the most important change will be greater competition and a wider range of viewing options. This should translate into lower prices for pay-TV services. It could also encourage a proliferation of free-to-air terrestrial television stations. Sentech already believes that there will be opportunities for regional or even community television channels in SA.
Albert Hertzog must be spinning in his grave.
Inet-Bridge || Discuss this article
Loading ...