{"id":30071,"date":"2013-01-17T13:05:19","date_gmt":"2013-01-17T11:05:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=30071"},"modified":"2013-01-17T13:41:04","modified_gmt":"2013-01-17T11:41:04","slug":"manufacturer-wades-into-digital-tv-debacle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/30071\/manufacturer-wades-into-digital-tv-debacle\/","title":{"rendered":"Manufacturer wades into digital TV debacle"},"content":{"rendered":"

South African contract manufacturing, communications and defence group, Tellumat<\/a>, has raised concerns over the recent South Gauteng high court finding in e-tv’s favour against the Department of Communications<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The free-to-air channel successfully argued that the DoC could not give Sentech<\/a>, the state-owned broadcasting signal distributor, the rights to manage the control system in the set-top boxes (STBs) to be used in the impending digital terrestrial TV migration.<\/p>\n

The court found that only Icasa<\/a>, the broadcasting regulatory authority, can do so. Subject to Icasa\u2019s powers, e-tv<\/a>, the SABC<\/a> and other free-to-air broadcasters are responsible for the set-top box control system for free-to-air digital terrestrial TV<\/a>, it reportedly ruled.<\/p>\n

Hampering effect<\/strong><\/p>\n

Held up as an important victory by e.tv \u2013 which has said the development \u201cwill speed up\u201d the already massively delayed migration process \u2013 the judgment will have just the opposite effect, says Shaun Hendricks<\/a>, Tellumat\u2019s managing executive responsible for the set-top box.<\/p>\n

Tellumat says that it has worked with the DoC developing the digital broadcasting specification, solutions and market strategies for five years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have spent money developing the intellectual property and investing in research and development in anticipation of business coming our way,\u201d the group was previously quoted in the media as saying.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe prospect of serving the market with solutions based on a certain baseline specification, and the opportunity this presents, has been foremost in the minds of manufacturers for some time,\u201d Hendricks said.<\/p>\n

Tellumat notes that the specification was finalised a year ago, settling a number of undefined specification areas including the control system \u2013 also known as conditional access (CA).<\/p>\n

Among others, the CA system will ensure compliance with a minimum set of specifications for STBs and prevent grey imports.<\/p>\n

Hendricks says the company and other manufacturers have invested millions in developing systems that are compliant with the specification.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of them responded to RFPs and developed solutions based on the published specification. If e-tv\u2019s win is upheld on appeal, and the station is given equal rights to managing the system, and they insist on changing the existing specification baseline, this will cause more delays, and the millions in investment would be lost,”\u00a0Hendricks said.<\/p>\n

“To move the specification, even just slightly, would incur significant extra costs and delays. To integrate new conditional access vendors into one\u2019s solution could take six months to a year.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition, if two CA vendors must guarantee performance of the box, a nightmarish customer service situation becomes the most likely scenario, in which neither wants to take responsibility for faults, Tellumat warns.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

No easy answer, no excuse<\/strong><\/p>\n

While Tellumat confesses that there are no easy answers to the conundrum, it says that a solution must be found.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo complicate the situation unduly is not in consumers\u2019, the industry\u2019s or the country\u2019s interests. It only serves the narrow interests of a few. One would hope the Department would see its way open to pursue a solution that is both legally sound and pragmatic,\u201d Hendricks said.<\/p>\n

More digital tv news<\/h3>\n

E-tv: the DoC is lying<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Digital TV decoder high court appeal: DoC responds<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Digital TV migration in SA: a primer<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Digital TV deadline may be missed in SA<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

New analogue TV signal switch-off deadline<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

DoC advisor slated by E-TV<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Final digital terrestrial TV regulations are here<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tellumat has raised concerns over the recent South Gauteng high court finding in e-tv’s favour against the Department of Communications.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":8184,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[1087,1444,4294,26,36,667,2058,3055,5009],"class_list":["post-30071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-department-of-communications","tag-doc","tag-e-tv","tag-headline","tag-icasa","tag-sabc","tag-set-top-box","tag-stbs","tag-tellumat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30071"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30076,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30071\/revisions\/30076"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}