Costa Rica Dumps ATSC DTV Standard

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Although Costa Rica began transmitting DTV using the ATSC standard in June 2006, private broadcasters Repretel and Teletica will soon be making the switch to the Japanese-Brazilian ISDB-Tb terrestrial DTV standard previously called SBTVD.

Costa Rica's adoption of the Japanese-Brazilian ISDB-Tb standard was made official in an executive order signed by the Oscar Arias, the nation's president this week. The order also received the signatures of Costa Rica's Minister for the Presidency and the Minister of Environment Energy and Telecommunications.

Costa Rica formed a special committee last year to test DVB-T, ATSC and ISDB-Tb standards. The committee conducted tests in different parts of the country and concluded that ISDB-Tb was technically more robust and presented "a measurable performance far superior to the performance of the other standards."

Other Latin American companies adopting ISDB-Tb include Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, Peru and Ecuador. ISDB-T is used in Japan.

Doug Lung
Doug Lung
Contributor

Doug Lung is one of America's foremost authorities on broadcast RF technology. As vice president of Broadcast Technology for NBCUniversal Local, H. Douglas Lung leads NBC and Telemundo-owned stations’ RF and transmission affairs, including microwave, radars, satellite uplinks, and FCC technical filings. Beginning his career in 1976 at KSCI in Los Angeles, Lung has nearly 50 years of experience in broadcast television engineering. Beginning in 1985, he led the engineering department for what was to become the Telemundo network and station group, assisting in the design, construction and installation of the company’s broadcast and cable facilities. Other projects include work on the launch of Hawaii’s first UHF TV station, the rollout and testing of the ATSC mobile-handheld standard, and software development related to the incentive auction TV spectrum repack. A longtime columnist for TV Technology, Doug is also a regular contributor to IEEE Broadcast Technology. He is the recipient of the 2023 NAB Television Engineering Award. He also received a Tech Leadership Award from TV Tech publisher Future plc in 2021 and is a member of the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society and the Society of Broadcast Engineers.