Kevin, You raise very important issues: - 1) Due to the low deployment T2 the cost of STBs remains high, from what I gather the government is working with UoN to produce the design locally and have it mass produced in China. We heard this last year and nothing seems to have happened. 2) Signet capacity systems and procedures remain the greatest impediment to the whole migration process. Their "anything goes" KBC approach leaves alot to be desired of and I have a litany of complaints which I have raised. The problem over the last year are ("A direct quote from an earlier emai"): - a) Latency It is very difficult to have a program going on for more than 3 minutes without it hanging or dragging. I am sure you have noticed as well that every so often the program will break and have to resume later, it's fine if this was to happen say once in an hour but at the current frequency it's not only affecting the experience but annoying. b) EPG KBC/SIGNET staff teat the production environment as a test environment. They add and remove station names, program guide according to their whims and at present instead of station names they show prog 1 prog 2 etc, one has to look for the station logo to know which channel they are on. The program guides are not up to date and it's on very rare occasions where the program on EPG and what's showing are aligned. There are times when Over the air channel updates are done during viewing times, this is an absolute no-no, as it requires 20-30 secs of no activity. c) Video/Audio out of synch There are stations where the audio and video are not coordinated. This misalignment is so pronounced on NTV where the picture would change and the voice would continue. Whereas this may not be the fault of Signet/KBC the onus is on them to take responsibility of the viewing experience, otherwise the whole migration process will falter. Kevin you are right the problem is not the technology or the bold government statements but operational issues. Kiania D. On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 1:07 PM, Kevin Ouma <kevin.ouma@gmail.com> wrote:
I have 2 questions / concerns on the same :-
There is a likelihood that the DVB-T2 set top boxes being unavailable and even if there are, will most likely have to be shipped from Europe. Cant seem to find any from the Chinese websites. That means on average 10 to 16k . Is signet already using the platform i.e if I get an upgraded decoder will I get q better quality ( or even HD ) signal on DVB2 -
Anyone from the digital Kenya secretariat on this forum ? Kevin On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 10:27 AM, David Kiania | Asentric Consulting Ltd <kianiadee@gmail.com> wrote:
I have some good news and some bad news. Bad news for early adapters to Digital Television like myself and great news for those who have not bought Set Top Boxes (STBs). The Government of Kenya has decided to change over from DVB-T http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVB-T to DVB-T2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVB-T2) technology, just like that (mutado?) The main difference being the number of channels that can be carried with T2 offering greater efficiency than it's predecessor.
The point of contention is this, for Nairobi and greater Nairobi where the initial deployment was done, they'll carry on with Simulcast (transmitting both) until 2012 when they'll switch off DVB-T. This means for those who've bought them STBs you'll have no option but to dump the current one and get a T2 compatible one.
FYI this was a News item yesterday and there's no consultation with the public. Cmon Ministry of Communication you can do better than this, I also think they'll switch off faster DVB-T sooner than 2012. Let's wait and see.
Disappointed
Kiania D.
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