| InfoTech News | Monday, September 6 2010 |
| |
Show me the way: The race to a digital Africa (0) comments
By Ik Anyanwu and Francis Onwumere | Monday, November 10 2008 | Infotech
  
 A new era in communication is unfolding. The phenomenon is driving globalization at a break neck speed causing boundaries between industries and economies to shatter. At the heart of this change is technological innovation which focuses on better ways to share information and connect a wide range of people from all over the globe.
Amidst all the innovation that technology brings into the realm of media and communications, one fact remains unchanged: content is king, and technology incessantly looks for better ways to present it.
Along these lines, a new development in presentation of content in the broadcasting industry is taking shape, all over the globe, in the form of Digital Broadcasting and Nigeria is in the race to become one of the first countries to fully switch over to this new standard with Television as the country’s focus.
Digital television, introduced in the late 1990s, has since made TV broadcast more flexible and efficient than the analog mode, when it is properly used by broadcasters. It allows for higher-quality images, high definition sound, more programming choices and newer revenue opportunities more than what the analog system offers.
Digital TV is broadcast in either of two formats, namely, High-Definition-Television (HDTV) and Standard Definition Television (SDTV). Of the two formats, broadcasters choose the SDTV format over the HDTV format as the SDTV format allows for easy subdivision of Digital TV channels, thereby, providing multiple feeds of entirely different programming on the same channel.  This liberty to provide either a single HDTV feed, or multiple lower-resolution feeds, is referred to, as “bit budget or multi casting”
As of late 2007, six countries had completed the process of turning off analog terrestrial broadcasting. Today, many countries across the globe are making concerted efforts to go digital, and Nigeria is not left out of this race.
South Africa has slated 2010, which coincides with their hosting of the FIFA world cup, and Nigeria is switching over by 2012, the same time with the rest of Africa and Europe. Experts the world over, agree that the global “switch over” is an expensive venture expensive, which will affect a majority of people all over the world, in terms of cost and ability to receive broadcast signals, so much so, that the U.S. Government is giving out vouchers for set top boxes to families, to help mitigate the cost, because, when the switch over is complete, most of the TV sets will still be analog and these set top boxes will help convert digital signals to analog signals.
The just concluded Africast biennial summit, tagged 'Digitization and the Challenges of Broadcasting', which held in Abuja, Nigeria, brought together broadcast experts and other stake holders from across the world to tackle the challenges of the global broadcast digitization.
The global broadcast digitization programme will definitely throw open the global broadcast market to everyone who is interested and eliminate the borders and barriers that characterize the analog system, and thus, expose the shortfalls and flaws of many.
If Nigerian broadcast organizations are to survive, remain relevant and effectively compete in the new order, stakeholders need to ensure that Nigeria’s broadcast content be made competitive especially in terms of quality. The stage is set for new contributors that will breathe new life into the industry.
Already two indigenous broadcasting giants have ventured into Digital Satellite Broadcasting, HiTV which commenced operations in 2007 and Daar Communications, operators of Africa Independent Television (AIT) and Ray Power FM. HiTV announced at the Africast summit that it has surpassed the 150,000 subscriber mark and just in the last month, Daar communications launched its own digital satellite platform, called DaarSat.
Another response has been the successful launch of the Masters program in Media and Communications at the Pan African University's School of Media and Communications, Lagos. This move is notable as the program is focused on enriching content of varied communication media.
These developments will help ensure the survival and success of the Nigerian and African broadcast industry in a digitized future.
| |
| |
|
(0) comments Click Here to Add Your Comment |
| No Comments Posted for this Article |
|
|
