The South African Development Community (SADC) announced that the region, which has a population of over 250 million, will adopt DVB-T2 — DVB’s second-generation digital terrestrial television standard.
The decision to adopt DVB-T2 with MPEG-4 compression was taken after rigorous testing and in-depth analysis of ISDB-T, DVB-T and DVB-T2.
The 15 Member States committee adopting the standard represented by the SADC are Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
It was also announced that the Member States would switch to digital television by Dec. 31, 2013. This is well ahead of the 2015 global switchover date in order to ensure that all related challenges would be overcome in time.
The UK saw the launch of the first DVB-T2 services earlier this year. Since then, Italy has launched DVB-T2 pay TV services followed by Sweden. In early 2011, Finland will start its DVB-T2 HD services. Advanced trials are currently taking place in Austria, Denmark, the Czech Republic and Germany.
