Marcos Dantas, undersecretary for planning at the Communications Ministry and in charge of coordinating work on digital terrestrial broadcast television, told Congress Tuesday, June 24, that the first pilot operations won?t be ready to begin for another four years.
In tesimony to the Senate Subcommittee on Television, Film & Information Technology, Mr Dantas presented a synthesis of the Government?s DTV policy, highlighting its view that while there?s no need to ?reinvent the wheel?, as he put it, Brazil could nonetheless develop a DTV system of its own based on existing standards for some layers of the technology.
He justified this view by recalling Brazil?s experience with the PAL-M standard for broadcast TV, almost universally execrated by the domestic industry. ?I believe it was PAL-M, with its technological barrier, that permitted the creation of a large TV monitor manufacturing segment in Brazil,? he said. ?If we didn?t have our own system, no would produce TV sets here. They would be imported from wherever they were already being produced.?
Digital TV
