Back in 2012, the choice taken by the Philippines over its digital terrestrial broadcast standard was poised to drag the rest of Asean (Association of South East Asian Nations) kicking and screaming to Japan’s ISDB-T. The fact that that decision has taken until this week to finally decide, leaves it years behind other parts of the trading bloc.
Circle back to 2011, and we ran the headline, “600 million Asians wait with bated breath for digital TV about-turn,” as the Philippine administration threatened to wrench the broadcast decision from the DVB Project’s DVB-T2 to ISDB-T. Had it been an early mover, the rest of Asean would have wanted to go the same route. As it has turned out, it is now on its own.
If it had added those 600 million to the 400 million population across the Latin American countries which opted for ISDB-T (everyone except Mexico) and the 127 million people using it in Japan, and it threatened to become the dominant digital broadcasting standard in the world. What probably happened, apart from the Philippines not being able to make up their mind, is that the DVB Project and the US agreed slowly to converge the ATSC and DVB-T standards, with the first step being the about to be implemented ATSC 3.0. That may well have prevented a mass exodus from DVB-T.
Asean had in principle made a decision in 2007 to adopt DVB-T, when all ten countries had signed up collectively. But in 2012 the Philippines questioned that decision and the technical staffs of its regulator firmly recommended ISDB-T ahead of DVB-T. Since then nothing from the Philippines until this week.
Meanwhile Indonesia took the plunge towards DVB-T2 in 2012, Vietnam had already made the move first and in 2011 moved onwards to DVB-T2, Myanmar opted for DVB-T2 in 2013, Thailand in 2014, and only Malaysia remains unsure of its plans. DVB crisis averted.
This week the decision was announced once again, rather than simply being hinted at, at the country’s Digital TV Summit, with the Department of Information and Communications Technology saying that it had chosen ISDB-T because it has an early warning system built into it. Philippines has had two natural disasters over the intervening period, the 2013 Typhoon Yolanda and a huge earthquake later that year.
The Emergency Warning Broadcast System allows users to receive early warnings and real time information during earthquakes, typhoons, and other calamities, though we’re not sure why one technology is better for this than any other. The Philippines is still running the US inspired NTSC system for analog TV for now.
On the multiple occasions, we have talked with the DVB it has always expressed confidence that the Philippines would end up endorsing DVB-T2, but this is perhaps the one that got away. No-one was thinking about the poor TV manufacturers and having to source different components for one country and another, when this decision was made, and the Philippines may find it ends up with more expensive TVs going forwards.
The National Telecommunications Commission of the Philippines announced years ago that it had selected ISDB-T, but was told to rethink in light of the Asean promise to all use the same system.
The decision to go with ISDB-T in Latin America was fostered on the back of $2 billion worth of investments and grants from Japan, and the promise of many Japanese manufacturers setting up local factories and creating jobs. It has taken over 5 years for the Philippine government to ratify the decision of the NTC technical group, so when analog switch off will happen is anyone’s guess.