As you may recall from a story in an earlier RF Report, Brazil has decided not to develop its own terrestrial DTV standard but instead adapt one of the existing DTV standards. A University of Leeds news release with the misleading title Brazil adopts new digital TV standard describes the process Brazil will use to select its DTV standard. It said Brazil was bringing together experts from twenty universities in Brazil and major IT companies from the U.S. and Europe to work on the project. Yorkshire UK based Wireless Technologies CIC and an unnamed U.S. company will act as independent research consultants to the project.
Professor Garik Markarian, director of the Institute of Integrated Information Systems at the University of Leeds and a member of the original team that created the DVB-T standard is leading the Wireless Technologies CIC team. He explained, "Any country looking to bring in digital television can choose from the two standards which already exist, the US and European, but rather than choose one standard over another, the Brazilian government has decided to take the best of both and include recent technological advances to create a completely new standard of their own."
Professor Markarian said his group's work would bring business to the U.K. and Yorkshire, noting, "Our involvement in the project means some of the latest innovations which we've developed are likely to be incorporated into the new standard. We're already working with U.K. industrial partners on creating the products to deliver these technologies, such as special components for televisions, transmission towers or set-top boxes. If the technology forms part of the new Brazilian standard, it will open a huge market for these products, which is a great opportunity for UK and Yorkshire companies working in this field."
In the Agencia Brasil article Digital TV is debated in the Senate, Ivan Richard reports Brazil's minister of Communication, Helio Costa, said Brazil is putting together a "Brazilian system of digital TV," one that will have "imported components and items made in Brazil, and we shall have the capacity to update the system on a permanent basis." The Agencia Brasil article said 79 research institutions throughout Brazil have been discussing the implementation of DTV in Brazil. To be part of the process of defining the Brazil standard, they will have to present their conclusions to the National Research and Development Council by December. The DTV system is expected to be implemented in Brazil by 2006, with the system possibly operational in four capitals--Brasilia, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte--as soon as July 2006.
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