Mambo, if you can watch Telezine on your current Cathode Ray Tube Television, for sure it is not Digital Television. Here's how Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) or the DVB-T standard works as prescribed by ITU. 1) The infrastructure operator installs an IP Headend, whose purpose is to collect inputs (streams) from broadcasters (KTN, Citizen NTV etc) who are connected via fiber or microwave and convert them into MPEG2 and MPEG 4 Streams. 2) After the headend the operator multiplexes these streams and sends them to the Digital Transmitters which are connected via IP Transmission whether microwave or fiber it doesn't matter. These transmitters operate on UHF frequency which means you get KBC, KTN, NTV and Citizen programs on the same frequency you will however choose the channel you want to watch by the Electronics Product Guide (EPG) which is installed either as part of the headend or as a seperate solution. 3) In instances where there are free to air programs and pay channels, the operator will install a Conditional Access (CA) system which has advanced encryption codes and are decoded by a set top box which seats before your televison. 4) Home users require a Set Top Box (STP) that will connect to the Cathode Ray Tube or LCD/Plasma TV. There's a raging debate in most countries if governement should subsidize the cost of the STPs or not. Since if left to market forces most households will not be afford it. The purpose of DTT or DVB-T is to free up spectrum for other purposes such as WIMAX, LTE Emergency services etc, with the main advantage being that all TV and Radio stations will on SFC (Single Frequency Carrier) thus negating the need of different stations to be on different channels depending on where they are. For Example KTN in Nairobi is channel 62 and in Mombasa is say channel 58 this will no longer be the case as it is spectrum inefficient. Status to Date: Contrary to popular belief and KBC bashing, they issued a tender last year and was opened on 18th December 2008, 8 vendors responded though only one fulfilled the entire RFP. To date the decision on vendor selection has not be reached it is also believed that this project has been shelved along with most projects 'lower' on the government priority list, as we deal with famine and global crises. The game plan is for KBC to spin off into a seperate infrastructure company that will put up and operate and manage the network and Television and Radio companies will remain content providers along with anyone else interested, whether pay or free to air. Eventually two additional DTT operator will be licensed in order to break the monopoly. Hope you find this helpful. David Kiania On Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 11:38 AM, mambo mutua <am.mambo@gmail.com> wrote:
Skunks, I bumped into KBC Telezine this weekend on my Telly. What touched me is that I can browse around pages like local news, informer, entertainment guide, government today , enquiries and contacts using my remote. Has this TV station gone Digital already?
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