Dubai may be one of the newest, richest, and most modern cities in the world these days, but the metropolis located in the United Arab Emirates cannot yet boast of its own HD services. But check back with them in about a year.
City officials say that while most of the hardware infrastructure for offering HD has been up and ready to run for many months, the required software (which they didn’t detail) is just now becoming available.
But the chief executive for the Eros Group, Deepak Babani, said that HD broadcasts should be available throughout the UAE by mid-2009, according to Gulf News online. The delay seems to be at least partly the result of the old chicken-and-egg dilemma: “The software side says they are waiting for the hardware [side] to set up first,” Babani said.
Another reason for Dubai’s delayed HD launch (originally scheduled for 2007) is the lack of suitable HD content for round-the-clock broadcasting, according to the Eros Group CEO. Even so, Babani said when HD does start up about a year from now, only three to four hours per day may be aired for a while.
