Digital TV Set-top Box Prices
In a meeting of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Communications, e.tv presented documentation which states, “The largest cost component in digital migration relates to the [Set-top Box] that needs to be acquired by every household in South Africa.”
This comes after a move by the Department of Communications to relook the digital broadcasting standard selected for South Africa, Digital Video Broadcasting – Terrestrial (DVB-T), after at least 6 years of investigations and 2 years of trials.
The major concern from e.tv and M-Net is the possible switch to Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting – Terrestrial (ISDB-T). When one looks at the numbers presented by e.tv, it’s easy to see why.
| DVB-T MPEG4 SD with AACHE | DVB-T2 MPEG4 SD with AACHE | ISDB-T MPEG4 SD with AACHE (6MHz) | ISDB-T MPEG4 SD with AACHE (8MHz) (estimated) |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unit cost for an order of 50k units (USD) FOB | $45 | $55 | $70 | $85 |
| Estimated total STB investment for SA TV households | $360 000 000 | $440 000 000 | $560 000 000 | $680 000 000 |
| Estimated total STB investment for SA TV households | R2 696 428 800 | R3 295 635 200 | R4 194 444 800 | R5 093 254 400 |
| Estimated additional cost to South Africans (STB only) for a change in technology standard | R599 206 400 | R1 498 016 000 | R2 396 825 600 |
TechCentral also recently stated that a report prepared by Farncombe Strategy for the South African National Association of Broadcasters found that the high cost of STBs has dramatically slowed the migration to digital TV in Brazil (one of the two countries in the world where ISDB-T had been deployed).
According to Dave Hagen, Technical Director of Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) at M-Net, DVB-T2 is an evolution of the DVB-T standard which is spectrally more efficient. In layman’s terms this means more channels can be carried and less bandwidth is used (which is especially useful for HD broadcasts).
Adoption of ISDB-T is supported by the recently founded National Association of Manufacturers in Electronic Components. According to Business Report the chairman of Namec, Keith Thabo, said the organisation had been approached by players in the industry to lobby government to support ISDB-T.
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