The South African TV industry is doing the absolutely correct thing with e.tv and M-Net – usually sworn competitors – coming out as united South African broadcasters and guns blazing, in a pre-emptive strike both supporting the best format for South Africa's switch-over to digital terrestrial television (DTT).
With the government now mulling changing the format, and South Africa's DTT process already lagging seriously behind, M-Net and e.tv just had a press conference this morning (and couldn't bother to invite me, although I'm actually in Johannesburg this week). M-Net and e.tv is banding together, saying as broadcasters they ''regret'' the government's sudden change of heart on the DVB standard. M-Net and e.tv is adamant that the adoption of a new standard will result in more costs for consumers, governments and broadcasters and says it will delay the DTT migration process for between three and five years.
''There are no problems with the DVB standard. We have been running a successful trial for two years now. Set top boxes (STB) are ready for production, the network is operating effectively and digital services are being enjoyed by trial participants. The DVB standard works and our trials have confirmed this,'' says M-Net CEO, Patricia Scholtemeyer.''We are using DVB because the standard was approved by cabinet, implemented in policy and confirmed in regulation. As a business, we believed this gave us the necessary regulatory certainty to proceed to make investments in DVB. This last minute about turn on standards could derail all the gains made to date.''
Marcel Golding, e.tv's CEO says that e.tv has had ''great success in our previous trial with the SABC and we are sure this next phase of preparation will only serve to further demonstrate our readiness to roll out the project on a commercial level using the approved DVB-T standard.''
Both e.tv and M-Net says they are ''ready to bring digital television to South African audiences''. Its now time for the SABC to join M-Net and e.tv in this crucial and extremely serious discussion and to come out with immediate support for M-Net, e.tv and the DVB standard for DTT in South Africa.
