No digital TV for 2010
SLUGGISH progress by the government in defining standards for the conversion to digital TV means most South Africans will not see games in all their digital glory when the 2010 Soccer World Cup kicks off.
While numerous other countries will enjoy crisp, high-resolution pictures, most local viewers will still be watching in a low-resolution analogue format, said Gartner analyst Will Hahn. He made the prediction after assessing SA’s progress in meeting its technology commitments for 2010, which include a pledge to broadcast in high-definition TV (HDTV) format.
“It’s somewhat unlikely that SA will see the games in HDTV but the broadcast itself has to be HDTV capable,” he said.
Broadcasters and Parliament’s communications committee have already criticised the delay in drawing up a digital migration policy, which includes the specifications for set-top boxes to convert the signals. Marcel Golding, CEO of e.tv, warned the delay would hold back a full commercial launch for another 16 months.
Yet communications department director-general Lyndall Shope-Mafole insisted the technology switchover would begin as planned by November 1, although viewers would still be able to watch analogue broadcasts until November 2011.
The government has pledged to Fifa that there will be no single point of failure when the matches are broadcast, and will roll out duplicate networks between all the stadia and the International Broadcast Centre in Johannesburg to guarantee “uptime” of 99,99%.
Hahn said broadcasting the World Cup was such a big undertaking that it had challenged even the most sophisticated networks in the past.
SA was largely on track, he said, although extracting information from the broadcasting and telecoms companies involved was proving difficult.
“It’s rather fashionable to doubt yourselves. There is nothing to compare your efforts to in terms of bravery, ambition and scope. Absolutely there could be problems, but I think things are going well,” he said at the Gartner conference in Cape Town this week.
The cellular networks should capitalise on World Cup fever by promoting mobile TV, letting them sell costly smartphones and supply video clips of match highlights or even full matches to viewers on the move.
“The operators are going to push hard to get mobile TV to you because of the relative disparity between smartphone penetration and TV penetration,” Hahn said.
He estimated that by 2010 there would be about 22 TV sets for every 100 people, while cellphone penetration was closer to 80%.
Hahn also warned businesses near a football stadium that they may as well close during a match because there may not be enough bandwidth to make calls or transmit data during the events. Thousands of people in the stadium will be sending text messages or photographs to their friends back home, phoning their colleagues to find out where they are, and filming the highlights and transmitting those home too.
That would soak up all the network capacity and leave neighbourhood businesses floundering. They might as well enter the spirit of things by setting up a big screen so their staff can watch the match rather than expect any productivity, Hahn said.
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