Azernews.Az

By Nigar Orujova

Until the end of 2013 the entire Azerbaijan will be covered with digital broadcasting and analog broadcasts will be halted.

"About 86 percent of Azerbaijan is covered with digital broadcasting and the country carried out extensive measures to switch to digital broadcasting in 2012," head of the National Television and Radio Council (NTRC) Nushiravan Maharramli told the local press on Wednesday.

Digital broadcasting is the practice of using digital data rather than analog waveforms to carry broadcasts over television channels or assigned radio frequency bands, which is becoming increasingly popular.

Digital links generally have more efficient bandwidth usage than analog links, which allows a content provider more room to provide services or to provide a higher-quality signal than had been previously available.

"Azerbaijan will finish the transition by the end of 2013, while the CIS countries set a task to full digital broadcasting transition until 2015," Maharramli said.

Azerbaijan was the first CIS country to implement a transition to digital broadcasting.

According to Maharramli, the transition to digital TV has a range of advantages, such as broadcasting quality and coverage. Those who have cable TV can already use digital TV as they do not need special equipment for the purpose.

Digital television is an innovative service that represents significant evolution in television technology. It implies transmission of audio and video by digitally processed and multiplexed signal, in contrast to the totally analog and channel separated signals used by analog TV.

Analog broadcasting will be discontinued in Azerbaijan after the country makes a full transition to digital broadcasts. Digital TV signals do not cover mountainous areas where the population is sparse, but these areas will be gradually covered by digital broadcasting as well.

The digital TV package is expected to include 12 local channels, as well as one Russian and one Turkish channel which will be selected based on appeals.

There are four different Digital Terrestrial Television-Broadcasting standards (DTTB) for digital television, and the Digital Video Broadcasting-Terrestrial (DVB-T) standard is used in Azerbaijan as well as a number of European, African and Asian countries. Subscribers must purchase a decoder to receive digital broadcasts.

According to Maharramli, the interest of low-income population is the most important milestone as the transition implies purchase of new TV sets or special decoders.

The first batch of DVB-T decoders, comprised of 1,000 units and produced by the local manufacturer PEYK plant under the Ministry of Defense Industry, will go on sale in late January or early February, PEYK plant manager Siyavush Aliyev said earlier.

The domestic market demand for these devices is expected to reach 1.5 million units.

The DVB-T PEYK decoders will support MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 standards. The devices' cost will fully comply with market prices and will not exceed 30 manats ($38).

The supplier of the components for digital tuners is Chinese company BBK Electronics Corp. whose products are now in demand in a number of CIS countries and Eastern Europe.

The first local satellite, Azerspace-1, which is expected to be launched in February, will also be used to render digital TV and radio broadcasting services in the country.