Members of the ATSC Forum were at the Summit of the Americas in Monterrey Mexico last week to promote DTV in general and the U.S. ATSC standard in particular to the foreign ministers and business leaders attending the Summit. ATSC Forum Chairman Robert Graves stated, "As officials work to establish policies that alleviate poverty and promote peace and prosperity, we want them to know that digital television is an effective tool for economic and social development throughout the region. Our goal here is to demonstrate this great potential so they will rethink the television as they know it today and see that digital television can go a long way toward stimulating national economies, informing and educating societies, and promoting greater transparency in government and greater civic participation."
Several companies -- Harris, Texas Instruments, LG Electronics, Triveni Digital, Zenith Electronics -- joined together with the ATSC Forum to put on the demonstration. Harris Corp. executive Nahuel Villegas showed how DTV could be used to bridge the digital divide. "Educasting," using DTV signals to broadcast educational information and Internet content to classrooms at low cost, was one example. Villegas said that in addition to using DTV for business and interactive applications, "the same technology can also be used for such things as teacher training, job training, parenting courses, the delivery of diagnostic health information, disaster prevention, and a range of other applications with tangible social and economic benefits."
The ATSC Forum used the opportunity to promote ATSC as the common hemispheric DTV standard and pointed to the great momentum in the DTV transition in the U.S. Mexico has yet to select a DTV standard, but several experimental ATSC DTV stations are on the air in Mexico.
