Digital-TV equipment flying off the shelves in Thailand

[webfact]

DIGITAL TV
Digital-TV equipment flying off the shelves
Usanee Mongkolporn
The Nation

BANGKOK: -- The markets for digital television sets and set-top boxes, as well as tablets with digital-TV tuners, are booming due to the launch of terrestrial digital-TV channels earlier this year, while more people are expected to cash in on the current distribution of vouchers for the purchase of equipment to watch these channels.

Takorn Tantasith, secretary-general of the National Broadcasting and Telecommu-nications Commission (NBTC), said yesterday that some 2 million digital-TV sets had been put on the market, with about 1.7 million of them having already been snapped up even before voucher distribution commenced last Friday.

There are also another 400,000 TV sets waiting for NBTC approval to join the voucher scheme.

The NBTC expects digital-TV sales will hit around 17 million units within three years, he said.

There are presently about 2.4 million digital-TV set-top boxes in the market, of which most will be available under the voucher scheme. Another 2.4 million units are waiting to join the scheme.

The vouchers, each worth Bt690, can be used to buy either a digital-TV set or a digital-TV set-top box.

Surprisingly, Takorn said, the import of tablets with digital TV-tuners has reached 2 million units, with another 1 million awaiting NBTC import permits - even though the voucher scheme does not cover them.

Ninety per cent of them have been imported by mobile-phone distributor Samart-I-Mobile.

The NBTC vouchers reached 500,000 households in four provinces - Bangkok, Nonthaburi, Ayutthaya and Suphan Buri - on Monday.

Meanwhile, NBTC officials, led by Takorn, yesterday visited a few villages in Suphan Buri to monitor the digital-TV signal strength. Some villagers complained to the officials that the voucher value of Bt690 could only cover the cost of the box, which meant they had to pay for the antenna themselves.

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/business/Digital-TV-equipment-flying-off-the-shelves-30245485.html


-- The Nation 2014-10-15

[ukrules]

Is the same type of device that people rushed to return after the world cup was cancelled on 'digital tv' ?

I don't know much about TV, I've got cable which I use for the news and the rest comes in through the internet in MP4 format.

[Gopro]

Anyone have a list of transmitter locations and frequencies?

[smedly]

is this available in Pattaya yet ?

[ramrod711]

May seem a silly question, but....if you buy a digital set top box, can it be used with an analog tv. My wife',s parents have an old tv, not sure how old but it is all the entertainment there is in their village. Wondering if I will have to buy them a new one.

[Tywais]

May seem a silly question, but....if you buy a digital set top box, can it be used with an analog tv. My wife',s parents have an old tv, not sure how old but it is all the entertainment there is in their village. Wondering if I will have to buy them a new one.

That is the purpose of the digital box to convert the over the air digital to analog to allow those with older TVs to still be able to use them. However the tv may need a composite video input plus need one for each analog tv you wish to connect to. Edit - just saw that some have RF in and RF out which means you can use TVs with just an antennae input with them.

http://www.pbs.org/digitaltv/converter_boxes.php

[Tywais]

[smedly]

May seem a silly question, but....if you buy a digital set top box, can it be used with an analog tv. My wife',s parents have an old tv, not sure how old but it is all the entertainment there is in their village. Wondering if I will have to buy them a new one.

the whole point of selling the box is to support those that don't have modern TV with digital tuner, so the answer is yes these boxes will work with older TV using the RF output and tuned to a channel on the analog TV

[ramrod711]

Thanks very much!

[carter1882]

Where can you buy the set top boxes in bkk?

[MaiChai]

So the cr*p TV will just have a clearer picture and sound? Can't think the content will improve?