Philippine Star: GMA Network cautions NTC about digital TV technology

Like the title says itself, GMA Network is very eager to push through the DVB-T2 standard for the digital terrestrial TV broadcast. Just like ABS-CBN which also has the hybrid set-up posted last week, GMA also housed Japanese and European-based DTV networks in their facility.

And they just admonished the National Telecommunications Commission, the regulatory body working out for the digital TV broadcast, to "go slow" with the finalization and implementation of digital TV in the Philippines.

Read the article after the break.

MANILA, Philippines -  GMA Network is urging the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to carefully consider what digital television transmission technology to adopt and when to require its adoption by local broadcasting companies due to the far-reaching repercussions of a bad choice.

In an interview, GMA chairman and CEO Felipe Gozon also revealed they expect higher revenues this year compared to last year. The company has also budgeted P750 million for capital expenditures this year.

Gozon said he expects the 2015 deadline for the shift by local broadcasting companies from analog to digital transmission to be pushed back since the review by the NTC and other government agencies is still ongoing.

The NTC earlier revealed that it may support the adoption of the Japanese digital technology instead of its European counterpart, but has yet to come up with the rules governing digital technology.

Gozon earlier said that while the network that they have installed can support either the Japanese or European version, he said the NTC should choose only the best standard. “Once you choose the standard, it is very difficult to change,” he pointed out.

He also advised the NTC to go slow on digitization, noting that even countries like the United States took a long time before mandating a complete shift from analog to digital considering the huge expenses that broadcasting companies will have to shell out. “It’s a very expensive proposition because even the television sets will have to be digital ready. And how many Filipinos can afford digital-ready TV sets,” he said.

The US government originally set a 1996 deadline for digitization, but it was only 10 years later that the move finally pushed through.

“We have to choose the best, the better of these standards…because that’s a long term decision that will affect not only the present but the future operation.

And secondly, it’s the readiness of the public, even if we are ready and the viewers are not yet ready, so we have balance and calibrate everything,” he added.

Meanwhile, he said their April revenues are good, “but May is really fantastic.” “We are over P1 billion in TV sales for Channel 7 alone so far, and this is not even an election year,” Gozon added.

He explained that GMA’s revenues suffered a setback last year due to the increase in advertising rates by the network. “We had to increase the rates. The advertisers reacted. Everytime you increase the prices, that’s the reaction. But they came back to us,” he said. - Mary Ann L. Reyes, dated 19 May 2011, 12:00 AM

Source: Philippine Star

Business World: NTC to finalize digital TV broadcast standard by June

Well it is for the NTC to decide which digital TV standard is going to suit the needs of every Filipino viewer, expect the rules to set on the end of June 2011.

THE NATIONAL Telecommunications Commission (NTC) hopes to finalize by end-June a review on which digital television standard to adopt, its top official said yesterday.

"The review is ongoing and we’re hoping to complete it in one and a half months from today," Commissioner Gamaliel A. Cordoba said in a telephone interview.

In June last year, NTC, following unanimous industry support, decided to adopt the Japanese Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting-Terrestrial (ISDB-T) standard as the country’s digital television platform over the European Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) technology.

However, in March this year, the House Committee on Information and Communication Technology encouraged a review of which standard to adopt, since the upgraded European standard (DVB-2) was not considered last year.

"So the outcome will be either we stick to the Japanese standard or we will adopt the new European standard," Mr. Cordoba said.

Despite admitting a "slow rate" in the country’s shift to digital TV, GMA Network, Inc. supports the review of which standard to adopt, Felipe L. Gozon, chairman and chief executive officer, told reporters yesterday.

"Yes, [we support the review] because we only want the best standard [for the country]...that’s a long-term decision that will affect not only the present but the future operation," he said after his firm’s annual stockholders meeting.

"[The shift to digital TV] is very slow [but] even in the US and in other countries, it took them some time before they were able to convert," Mr. Gozon said.

Mr. Gozon said that the firm is waiting for NTC’s decision on which standard to adopt as the broadcaster cannot, at present, roll out plans without it.

Already, the implementing rules and regulations (IRR) for the country’s switch to digital television is eyed to be finished within the month, or next month at the latest, Mr. Cordoba said.

The government is aiming to complete the shift to digital TV by 2015.

After NTC issues the IRR and decides on which digital TV standard to adopt, broadcasting firms can start rolling out the digital signals alongside analog signals.

The 2015 target, however, may be moved as deemed by the broadcasting firms and consumers, Mr. Cordoba said.

"We could say that it is a moving target. The shift to digital TV will require a lot of investments from firms and it will also depend on how fast the public can adopt," Mr. Cordoba said.

The decision last year to adopt the ISDB-T standard was reached in a meeting of stakeholders from the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas, GMA Network , ABS-CBN Corp., RPN Channel 9, and Vanguard Radio Network Co., Inc., among others.

In June last year, representatives from the Japanese embassy and NTC officials signed a memorandum of cooperation. Japanese makers of the set-top boxes required for non-digital TV sets were said to have committed to build a manufacturing plant in the Philippines to help cut prices.

Aside from Japan, the ISDB-T has been widely adopted in South America.

In 2006, the industry regulator released a memorandum saying the country would be using the European standard DVB for digital television.

The NTC later deferred this, saying more consultations were needed. - Kathleen A. Martin, dated 18 May 2011, 10:31 PM

Source: Business World

IRR. The Bible of Digital TV Broadcast.

We have now chosen the best digital TV standard in the country, the ISDB-T International being fit into the Philippine geography, the lifestyle of TV habits of Filipinos and the future expansion of addressing new markets in advertising and broadcasting. Just last year, the National Telecommunications Commission issued a draft memorandum circular ordering ISDB-T International is the sole digital terrestrial television standard of the Philippines.

With this, next step will be the rules and regulations to be obeyed by everyone, from the broadcasters to the receiving public. Back in early 90’s, the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkasters ng Pilipinas formed the KBP Technical Standards for Television to maintain equal and balanced in broadcasting industry, from basic setup of the NTSC analog TV standard, to field strength intensities being measured to avoid interference.

Just this February of 2011, the NTC formed the Technical Working Group – Implementing Rules and Regulations or the TWG-IRR to formulate all the norms on digital broadcast. The group will discuss, as the name says itself – rules, and guidelines on every aspects in the upcoming DTT broadcast. To give you instincts on what to expect in the formulation of the IRR, we’ve read the harmonization documents presented by Japan’s Digital Broadcast Experts Group or DiBEG about the similarities of standardization of Japan’s digital broadcast system by Association of Radio Industries and Broadcast or ARIB and Brazil’s SBTVD group ABNT.

Firstly, most of the rules being discussed in the IRR are discussed with full of technical jargons and acronyms. The papers are preceded by abbreviations and definition of terms, as well as the scope of the rules. The IRR is subdivided into technical categories, such as transmission, video and audio standards, multiplex, service information, receivers, security, interactive channel or the middleware and data broadcast. Both Japan and Brazil do have the same concept and same flow of the rules being set, so we do expect the NTC to also follow the suit.

What differs into both ruling systems is Japan’s inclusion of digital satellite and cable TV broadcast, since Brazil’s ABNT guidelines only discuss the terrestrial system. In the Philippines, cable and satellite TV migration is not mandatory, so only the DTT will be deliberated further in the regulations.

In the next paragraphs, we will discourse each categories, hypothetically analyze each to suit into the Philippine digital terrestrial TV broadcast.

Transmission

In the document posted by DiBEG, Japan and Brazil uses the same bandwidth of 6 megahertz, the current TV bandwidth being used in analog, as well as the carrier frequency of 143 kHz above the center frequency, sampling frequency and other technical matters. What differs from both is the frequency allocation, where Japan utilizes UHF band only (14-62) and Brazil includes the highband VHF and UHF (7-69) for their digital broadcast. Others as well as the transmission spectrum and spectrum mask.

Philippines, for sure, will also use the current 6-MHz TV bandwidth for every channel, along with the carrier frequency of shifted 143 MHz on the center frequency. About the frequency plan, tentative is to use the current UHF standard of the Philippines as stated in the KBP guidelines of channels 14 to 62, just like Japan.

Video

In this chapter, the video standard was primarily discussed by both ARIB and ABNT’s rules. Technically, it conveys the scanning capability in digital broadcast, the video signal, video formats and resolutions being used in the broadcast. It both also discussed the procedures on switching formats, from SD to HD and vice versa.

ISDB-T, or other digital broadcast standards, also offers multi-broadcasting. Multi-broadcasting in DTV implies switches from SDTV to HDTV and vice versa. Whenever a channel is in Multi-SD format, for a time it will play a movie in HDTV, a broadcaster can easily transform its setup from 3-channel SDTV to 1 HDTV channel. In both ISDB-T variants, this procedure is preferably available in both markets, it’s the broadcaster who will choose whether they like to implement this or not.

Similarities within both standards also being discussed were the active coding areas, scanning direction, video signal parameters and other technical stuffs. 1seg video encoding is also similar to both flavors, since they use the H.264 MPEG-4 AVC video standard.

What differs from both standards are, essentially, the video coding system in full-segment transmission. Brazil chooses to implement the ITU standard for DTV, the use of H.264 MPEG-4 AVC, while Japanese video standard uses H.262 MPEG-2 video. In principle, H.262 video offers lossless video quality, which is perfectly in-stream with the new Blu-Ray video standard, whilst MPEG-4 is also at par with the quality of MPEG-2, but in reality, the latter is a compressed one, giving way much better use of the bandwidth. As much as possible, 1 HD channel on MPEG-2 can carry 2 HD MPEG-4 AVC channels.

Another difference is, Brazil included in its specifications, the seamless switching of picture aspect ratio with the 525i TV system, which is PAL-M. Remember that the Brazil’s PAL-M is much similar compared to the widely-used NTSC-M. Aside from that, the receiving operations are different for both, since SBTVD includes the 14:9 aspect ratios. 1seg video resolutions also differ, as Brazil includes CIF quality (352 x 288) and the 30fps, while Japan only has 15 fps, QVGA video (320 x 240), as the maximum resolution for portable TV broadcast.

Preempting the Philippines’ own rules on digital broadcast, it will be using the SBTVD standard MPEG-4 AVC. Currently, ABS-CBN is the very first digital TV network to transmit MPEG-4 AVC video, since NBN and GEMNET is under the MPEG-2 video standard. With this, ABS-CBN can fit those 7 channels (including the 5 premium channels to be offered soon) into the 6-MHz bandwidth. Aspect ratio is further being discussed in the IRR, as well as the multi-broadcasting feature. 1seg broadcast will also be using the MPEG-4 AVC, in Japanese video format QVGA at 15 fps.

 Note: The views and opinions of Admin-1 do not reflect the whole DTV Pilipinas. Words being described in the following article do not mean the exact amount of information as technically stated by the resource persons, or even related articles pertained.

Manila Standard Today: Digital TV shift reviewed

Here is a piece of news relayed by the Manila Standard on NTC's stand to review the chosen digital TV standard for the country. As far from now, the National Telecommunications Commission stands for what the unanimous decision has been decided, which is the Japanese Integrated Standard for Digital Broadcast or ISDB-T, and been working out for the rules and regulations that will be implemented throughout the start of the digital TV broadcast age in the next few months.

On the contrary, GMA Network still pushes through the newer generation of DVB-T, the T2 standard, which is mostly the best digital TV standard of the world.

Read the article in the following break.

The National Telecommunications Commission is reviewing the platform that will be used for the country’s transition into digital TV after Europe proposed a newer standard claiming to be better than the Japanese technology.

NTC deputy commissioner Carlo Juan Martinez told Manila Standard in a chance interview that Malacañang has ordered the regulator to consider the newer version of European’s digital video broadcasting technology.

“We are reviewing DVB-T2 simultaneously with the drafting of digital TV rules [under a Japanese platform],” he said.

The NTC in June last year issued a circular adopting Japan’s integrated services digital broadcasting technology as the Philippines’ official digital TV platform.

Martinez said it was likely that NTC would delay the rules because the team reviewing DVB-T2 was part of the technical working group drafting the digital TV regulations on the use of the Japanese platform.

“It is possible that both the issuance of rules and its implementation will be delayed. But we are hoping not since the review will not take a long time,” he said.

He added it was also possible that the chosen standards would be revised, depending on the outcome of the review.

“The DVB-T2 is still more expensive than the Japanese standard so there is a slim chance that the platform will be changed. It is still a possibility,” Martinez added.

The rules are scheduled for release next month while the transition is expected to start in January next year. However, NTC said it was extending the 2015 deadline to completely shut off analog TVs.

There was no formal agreement signed yet between the government of Japan and the Philippines officially designating the latter’s platform as the country’s digital TV technology.

The NTC said the government was still negotiating with the Japanese government to include soft loans for private broadcasters for the acquisition of necessary equipment for the analog TV shutoff.

The National Broadcasting Network, owned and operated by the government, received early this year a $4-million equipment grant from Japan, which will allow the TV network to easily shift from analog to Japanese digital TV technology. - Jeremiah F. de Guzman, dated 17 May, 2011.

Source: Manila Standard Today