After choosing the Japanese ISDB-T standard for their digital terrestrial TV (DTT) system, the Brazilian authorities have invested much money and diplomatic effort in spreading the Brazilian variant ISDB-Tb and the Ginga middleware to other countries. They were partially successful: Ecuador has recently announced it will adopt ISDB-Tb, after Argentina, Chile, Peru and Venezuela. A few African countries, including South Africa, are reconsidering their previous inclination to adopt the European DVB-T standard.
However, political will is not enough to convince Brazilians it is worth buying a set-top box to watch DTT. Despite tax incentives, quotas on TVs, incentives for mobile TV handsets and intensive marketing, Brazilians continue to be confused about what ‘DTT’ means.
Farncombe recently visited several large electronics stores in Brazil, and despite the availability of integrated DTT TV sets for sale, the vast majority of salesmen confused DTT with high definition or with digital pay-TV (pay-TV operators use the European DVB standard).
Three years after launch, Farncombe estimates that less than 2% of households view DTT services, and most DTT tuner sales are “accidental”, as they are integrated into large TV sets (in which DTT tuners are mandated), mobile and portable devices.
Farncombe believes that the key reasons for the challenges faced by Brazilian DTT are:
- Lack of exclusive DTT content: DTT services are HD versions of analogue TV ones and most cities with DTT coverage only receive the top one or two broadcasters.
- Competition from pay-TV services: the launch of new DTH operators has decreased the pay-TV entry price and driven a 20% increase in the number of pay-TV subscribers in the last 12 months. In addition, the focus on HD as DTT’s differentiator makes DTT attractive only to HD-set-owning higher-income households, which are more likely to subscribe to pay-TV.
In spite of the slow adoption of fixed DTT in Brazil, mobile operators have launched several handset models with integrated DTT tuners and broadcasters are investing in in-fillers to improve DTT mobile reception. Meanwhile, other countries have learnt from the Brazilian experience and are allowing multichannel DTT and subsidising decoders to create an initial viewing base for DTT services.
Farncombe’s experience advising broadcasters and governments planning their transition to DTT has taught us that careful planning to ensure the platform’s attractiveness to viewers is more important than the choice of transmission standard (ISDB-T, ISDB-Tb, DVB-T or DVB-T2), which can have very similar end-user functionality depending on the network configuration. Technical specifications that are not mandated and officially certified are often ignored by most vendors, and the high degree of fragmentation of the receivers’ base makes it commercially unfeasible to offer advanced TV services.
To know more about Farncombe’s experience in DTT transition please contact us at strategy@ftl.co.uk
Dear David -Thanks for your comments -it does seem to me however that you are confusing the transmission standard with the network configuration and implementation policy that was adopted, and this was exactly the point we were trying to raise. ISDB-T as a transmission standard is as good as any, but not responsible in itself for the features you mention. HD content and free mobile reception can be enabled by any system depending on the configuration adopted; Germany for example provides good free-to-air mobile reception, and mobile handsets are widely adopted there; HD is broadcast and mass adopted by several European countries, including the UK and France; DVB-T2 has already been adopted by some countries, and is operating in the UK for example. But the focus of our comments relate to the transition policies adopted by the Brazilian government, and not about the system in itself, I am sorry for the misunderstanding.
“political will is not enough to convince Brazilians it is worth buying a set-top box to watch DTT”
It never was. Image quality is. I have yet to see someone (be layman or not) that won’t be amazed with free to air, HD images coming from open broadcasters. The world cup is being an example: all my friends are buying HD sets to view the SA World Cup. Many of them after watching the games on my house.
“Brazilians continue to be confused about what ‘DTT’ means.”
I will give you the benefit of doubt here, but my general opinion is that the majority of the population will always be. Take a look at what happened in United States, where the HD switch process is much older (Brazil started in December 2007). It has nothing to do with the standard itself.
“the vast majority of salesmen confused DTT with high definition or with digital pay-TV (pay-TV operators use the European DVB standard).”
This has nothing to do with the quality of the system, but rather the quality of training of stores. Personally, that happens everywhere in the globe from my experience.
“Technical specifications that are not mandated and officially certified are often ignored by most vendors, and the high degree of fragmentation of the receivers’ base makes it commercially unfeasible to offer advanced TV services.”
Again, fallacy. Because we are not paying much attention to “advanced TV services” does not mean the system is not advanced enough to do it. It all depends if the country is responsible enough to choose what is best for their scenario. The system is ready, it is available. If “advanced TV services” is what, say, Argentina wants, then they better use it. We are not using because nobody cares much (but that can change if there is market for it). But if a country wants interactive systems, be my guest: we offer what is probably the most advanced system (as in: you can create more advanced applications and systems). Did you ever had a chance to test Ginga-NCL?
Other than that, I probably agree. Despite the system that is used, its attractiveness matters the most. That’s why we, in Brazil, selected a system that proved, on raw data, to be the best option for our particular scenario. That is: more advanced codec (one adopted later by DVB, by the way), free mobile reception (including the ability, if a given broadcaster wants, to provide different content for mobile sets), and some more technical details that I don’t know much.
Anyway, the point is: Brazil could be improving more, sure, but that tells more about the broadcasters and the government (in)ability to do something more useful with it than about the quality and capabilities of the system itself. And don’t even get me started on the same problems of deploying DVB-T2…
Best regards.