Rapid TV News reports that Venezuela has now succumbed to the temptations of ISDB-T as the Latin American states fall like nine-pins to the bowling ball of the Japanese HD and mobile TV standard.
It does appear that longevity is the strong point of any standard which should now reach more than 400 million people, and something over half of that number in live handset owners.
Venezuela rejected DVB-T after demonstrations lasting 2 full years and instead opted for a Japanese standard, so publicly selected by Brazil a few years back, a decision that is now seeing devices ‘ both TVs and One Seg handsets, emerge in that country as 26 cities are now wired for transmissions. Central America has pretty much already split between DVB-H for mobile TV and ATSC for SD digital TV, and it is still not too late there to adopt ISDB-T, except perhaps in Mexico.
Additionally Peru conducted trials with ATSC, DVB-T and ISDB-T and has also apparently added its weight behind the Japanese standard, in order to support video TV roaming reception across South America. Recently Argentina and Chile made the same choice. The Venezuela decision was leaked by Brazilian officials, keen to see their choice of standard widespread and we cannot find official confirmation of it yet.
Ecuador and Columbia are apparently coming under pressure to consider a similar move despite both already pledging themselves to DVB-H and DVB-T.
Slowly DVB-H is drawing the same kind of numbers together, with recent German awakenings in DVB-H, France still saying it may get a deal worked out by next year and Italy, Finland, Netherlands, South Africa and a few Eastern European countries like Poland joining the Philippine, Indonesian, Malaysian and Vietnamese DVB-H adherents. But this is a far more distributed following. With CMMB taking hold in China and T-DMB happily ensconced in South Korea, we are set to see a more widely distributed set of technology options for digital and mobile TV than for TV. Potentially CMMB (and the Chinese standard for terrestrial TV) will reach the most people, ISDB-T will be next, ATSC M/H after that, with DVB-H and T-DMB bringing up the rear. India currently looks on track to become a DVB-H follower which might have the potential to make DVB-H as a technology, one of the world leaders. That’s if it doesn’t succumb to China’s charm and go down the CMMB route.