Analogue broadcasting ends in most of Japan
Japan became the first Asian nation to switchover to digital TV broadcast on the 24th July 2011.
Public broadcaster NHK terminated its analogue broadcasts in all areas of Japan except for the three prefectures which were devastated by the 11th March earthquake and tsunami. Analogue broadcasts in the region will continue until the 31st March 2012.
NHK President Masayuki Matsumoto and Michisada Hirose, President of the National Association of Commercial Broadcasters in Japan, held a joint press conference in Tokyo.
Mr Matsumoto said: "As a public broadcaster with a mission of delivering its services throughout Japan, NHK has invested about 400 billion yen (US$5.1 billion) to implement necessary measures, including the construction of relay stations".
Analogue terrestrial television broadcasting in Japan was launched in 1953. NHK began its terrestrial digital broadcast in 2003 following a legal revision that stipulated that analogue transmissions be terminated by 24th July, 2011. However, after the 11th March earthquake, it was decided that digital switchover in the affected areas would be postponed until next March.
Source: Asia Pacific Broadcasting Union
Item added: 1st August 2011 



ASO delayed in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima
Japan’s Ministry of Communications is delaying the analogue switch off in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima; the areas most severely affected by the earthquake and tsunami, on the 11th March.
The nationwide switchover to digital television was planned to take place on the 24th July 2011 and this is now expected to be delayed by a year.
Concern has been growing in the quake-hit areas that a complete shift from analogue broadcasting would strip evacuees and others of a major means to receive vital information related to the disaster such as aftershocks.
Source: advanced television.com
Item added: 26th April 2011 



Millions of Japanese households not ready for ISDB-T
Six months before the planned switch from analogue to digital broadcasting, up to 2.5 million households among some 50 million households in Japan are not yet ready, the Japanese Communications Ministry said on Friday, according to the Japan Times.
Broadcasters in Japan, including NHK, will stop analogue broadcasting at noon on the 24th July.
As the government plans to complete the transition to ISDB-T on time, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications will promote measures to help prepare the households, it said. The number of unprepared households decreased in three months from some 7.5 million as of the end of September, according to the ministry.
On Friday, Communications Minister Yoshihiro Katayama told a press conference: ‘‘I have no intention of postponing the deadline (for completion).’’
Source: Asia Pacific Broadcasting Union
Item added: 31st January 2011  



MediaFLO and ISDB-Tmm fight for Mobile TV licence in Japan
KDDI Corp and NTT DoCoMo have concluded their presentations to the government for the available Mobile TV licence reports rapid TV News.
KDDI is planning a MediaFLO service, while NTT DOCoMo wants to use the Japanese standard ISDB-Tmm (terrestrial mobile multimedia).
ISDB-Tmm is an extension of the current ISDB-T 1-seg service which only assigns around 430kbits/sec for mobile TV.
ISDB-Tmm differs from ISDB-T in that it dedicates all its segments for mobile TV use in order to produce a standard to compete with more technically advanced systems for the delivery of TV to mobiles and handhelds such as DVB-H and MediaFLO.
The government is expected to choose the winner shortly.
Source: Rapid TV News
Item added: 26th July 2010  




Funding to boost DTT penetration suggested
Paying 20,000 yen (€152) to people who trade in their analogue televisions for new digital sets was just one of the proposals suggested to boost DTT take up at a recent Tokyo conference. One member of the ruling coalition also suggested an additional 1 trillion yen (€7.6 billion) package to assist with the transition from analogue to digital TV.
Japan has around 100 million TV sets and is scheduled to end analogue TV broadcasting in July 2011.
Source: Bloomberg
Item added: 23rd March 2009




Digital transition falters
The current number of households converting from analogue to digital terrestrial TV broadcast capability was 2.5 million short of the governments interim target for September of 26 million according to figures released at a recent conference of interested parties.This amounts to 47% of its target to integrate 50 million households by April 2011.
In May 2008 43.7% of households had made the switch.
Because of the sluggish world economy the government fears that future DTT penetration targets will be missed and it is expected that to improve the situation they will work to promote DTT adoption possibly by encouraging manufacturers to reduce the cost of DTT receivers.
Analogue switch-off is planned to be completed in July 2011.
Source: Yomiuri Shimbun Online
Item added: 9th December 2008
 

New SKY Perfect DVB-S2 satellite service for Japan
In October 2008 “SKY PerfecTV/HD” started broadcasting 15 High-Definition channels  using DVB-S2 and plans to expand to more than 70 channels in October 2009 and eventually to over 100.
SKY PerfecTV! HD utilizes MPEG-4, H.264 AVC compression as well as DVB-S2 transmission technology, which allows the transmission of even greater numbers of programs in a high-definition format.
Set-top boxes for this service allow subscribers to view both standard and high-definition content, and will also provide many other convenient functions.
Source: SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation
Item added: 13th October 2008


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Last page update: 1st August 2011, Barry Tew T