Peru has yet to adopt a terrestrial DTV standard, but it appears that some progress is being made.
A multi-sectored committee was tasked in 2007 with evaluating ATSC (American), DVB-T (European), DTMB (Chinese), ISDB-T (Japanese) and SBTDT (Brazilian) DTV standards. That group submitted its report to Peru's Ministry of Transport and Communications last month.
The committee tested the systems in both the country's mountains and jungles, and along the coastline. It also assessed the economic and technical cooperation differences associated with the systems.
Peru's Minister of Transport and Communications, Enrique Cornejo, quoted in an article this week on www.24horaslibre.com, said that while no decision has been made on Peru's terrestrial DTV standard, It would be made soon. This article confirmed that the Brazilian government had offered $500 million to install the SBTDT system in Peru and said similar offers have been received from Japan, the European Union, the Chinese government and the United States.
While the Brazilian SBTDT standard appears to be the current favorite, few countries have adopted that standard, resulting in more expensive set-top boxes and fewer choices for these units.
SBTDT and DTMB are more recent standards and incorporate newer technology such as H.264 encoding. The requirement not to disenfranchise a large number of viewers with current DVB-T and ATSC receivers using MPEG-2 encoding makes it more difficult to change these established DTV standards. If the prime minister keeps his word, we should know soon what standard Peru will adopt.
For additional information, see Recomiendan esperar definición de estándar de TDT antes de comprar televisores and La elección de estándar para TV digital no afectará a los servicios de cable.
All articles mentioned in this article are in Spanish, but can be translated using the Google translator.
