Broadcasters Want Japanese ISDB-T for DTV in Brazil

The Web site internacional.radiobras.gov.br has featured several articles about selection of terrestrial DTV standard for Brazil. Brazil is proceeding cautiously in selecting a DTV standard and engineers there have been evaluating ATSC, DVB-T and ISDB-T systems for several years. There has even been discussion about Brazil developing its own DTV standard. An article last week by Marcela Rebelo and Keite Comacho titled Digital TV format discussion goes to Congress said radio and TV broadcasters have reached a consensus favoring the Japanese ISDB-T format. Like DVB-T, this standard is based on COFDM, with the addition of longer interleaving (similar to the ATSC system) to reduce the impact of impulse noise.

There is no consensus among other areas of Brazilian society, according to the article and it reported that Deputy Jandira Feghali was against the Japanese format. Feghali's objected to the format on the grounds that because it was expensive, some broadcasters could find it difficult to use. Read Digital TV format discussion goes to Congress for other comments.