GMA-7 resists shift to Japanese standard for DTV

The Philippines’ GMA Network Inc (GMA-7) is strongly opposing the plan of the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to shift to Japanese standard for the country’s migration to digital terrestrial TV, philstar.com reports.

In an interview with reporters, GMA-7 Chairman Felipe Gozon said the broadcasting firm was more inclined to adopt the European standard as about 90 percent of its equipment is already digital.

“Since we are going to invest our money, it is our study that will control our decisions. It’s as simple as that, but we already told the NTC we are studying the European standard,” Gozon explained.

He added that the government should allow broadcasting companies to decide on their own which technology to adopt due to the capital intensive nature of the industry.

The NTC and the Department of Science and Technology (DOTC) are set to recommend to Malacañang the use of Japan’s Integrated Service Digital Broadcasting-Terrestrial or ISDB-T standard. They claim the Japanese is a more appropriate model as the European model has higher modulation and more complicated modulation techniques.

The agencies also picked the Japanese standard because it is cheaper than Europe’s Digital Video Broadcasting-Terrestrial 2 or DVB-T2.