Brazil Near Deal to Use Japanese DTV Standard

The window for a Brazilian decision is closing, partly because of an impending national election, industry officials agreed. A decision was expected March 6 but Brazil delayed. Now, “it has to happen within the next few weeks,” said Peter MacAvock, exec. dir. of the DVB standards-setting organization. More delay probably would mean a lag into the next govt. administration, and at least next year if not later, he told us.

Brazil is deemed the last big front in the war for DTV standard markets. Besides being the world’s 5th most- populous country, Brazil is expected to exert heavy influence on neighboring nations’ standards decisions, Robert Graves, ATSC Forum chmn., said. His group pushes the U.S. standard. ATSC has been hopeful victory in Latin America will create a hemisphere-wide standard, because of proximity and because all of N. America has adopted ATSC.

But the issue has become economic and political, rather than technical, all parties said. At a Wed., press conference in Japan, Amorim termed the 3 standards “all very beautiful,” adding “we are looking for the one who has the best dollars.” Brazilian officials have acknowledged they want investment in Brazil, perhaps by building a chip factory there, and AFP said Toshiba is sending a team to Brazil to work on setting up such a factory. Europe’s DVB coalition, which includes STMicroelectronics, Thomson, Philips and other firms, also has discussed a chip factory in Brazil.

The U.S. hasn’t offered to invest in Brazil in return for ATSC support, Graves told us, but says acceptance of the U.S. standard would open the door for Brazil to export TV gear across the hemisphere. He said if Brazil adopts the Japanese standard, or even a local variant of it, chances for billions in export sales are limited.

Graves said he remains optimistic about ATSC’s chances in Brazil, despite major Brazilian broadcasters’ statements backing a variant of the Japanese system. But MacAvock said a Brazilian buy-in for ATSC is “just not going to happen” due to broadcaster opposition.

Brazil’s decision is expected to influence Argentina and Chile, officials said. Argentina picked ATSC in 1998, then backed off. Graves said Argentina is “near a decision to re- affirm ATSC” and only waiting to see how Brazil tilts. Not so, said MacAvock. Graves said it’s nearly inconceivable that other Latin nations would choose anything but ATSC if Brazil chooses it. Any other Brazilian decision would open the rest of Latin America to competition, MacAvock said.

But in hindsight the DTV standard market war may not be that important, Graves told us. Getting a critical mass of countries behind one analog standard or the other did matter, thanks to the stark differences between PAL and NTSC equipment. Getting enough customers for each was critical to lowering broadcast gear and set costs. That history prompted a major effort by both ATSC and DVB to sign up countries to use their standards.

But digitization has erased many distinctions among DTV standards, and ATSC and DVB each has a base large enough to lower costs, industry officials said. “In a digital world, [a large base of countries] is much less important than in analog,” Graves said. Content conversions are easier, and production and transmission processes more severable, he said. Many components run easily on either standard, so prices for encoders, modulators and related units already are near rock bottom, MacAvock said.

DTV set prices already are plummeting in DVB countries, MacAvock said. He claimed they're dropping faster than in ATSC regions, then acknowledged that might be because in ATSC nations set prices have already dropped sharply. “If nobody else in the world adopts ATSC, we are okay,” Graves said: “But it would be better if there were more.”

U.S. and European standards-setting bodies have “moved on” past their once-intense rivalry, MacAvock said. “There’s no real competition between ATSC and DVB anymore,” he said. He said the 2 camps are trying to assure as much “harmony” as possible at the modular level, and in middleware, interfaces and home networking, though debates over modulation schemes remain “religious.” “We don’t really fight anymore, except in Latin America, and that’s healthy,” MacAvock said.