Burma: Slow Start for Free-to-Air Digital TV

Excerpt from report in English by Burmese newspaper The Myanmar Times website on 28 July

Consumers have been slow to adopt Myanmar’s first free-to-air digital television channel launched in early February by [army-run] Myawaddy Television (MWD), said U Ye Naing Soe, the deputy manager of Shwe Nay Chi Co Ltd, which is supplying technical support for the project.

Digital television offers a number of advantages over analogue – the signal is clearer, which improves both sound and audio. On the downside, it requires a set top box to receive the digital signal. In Yangon [Rangoon] that box costs about 50,000 kyat [as received] but buying it – and connecting to digital television – does not unlock any extra channels.

U Ye Naing Soe said digital transmission is offered on [state- run] MRTV, MRTV-3, MRTV-4, MWD, MWD-1 and MWD-2, which is transmitted from Mingalar Taung Nyunt township and extends 10 miles (16 kilometres) beyond Yangon’s city limits.

However, U Ye Naing Soe cautioned that even with a VHF antenna and a set top box, some people living on the city’s outskirts might still not be able to receive the signal.

U Ye Naing Soe said one of the biggest misconceptions about digital television is that it can be received with an ordinary VHF antenna, which is not the case.

“Most people think you can watch digital television using just a VHF antenna but that’s not true – you must have a set top box too,” he said.

To improve awareness of this issue he said the company plans to run a programme on an analogue television channel explaining what must be done to receive the signal.

Another possible reason as to why the digital network has yet to take off is that many potential consumers of the service can already access it through the Movie-5 pay-TV package, which also includes sports, news, entertainment and movie channels.

U Tin Than Oo, a former television director, said MWD television’s digital service runs on the same frequency as the Movie- 5 package, meaning that anyone paying for the service got digital television without buying a set top box.

He questioned how many consumers would pay 50,000 kyat for a set top box when they could get the Movie-5 package and the MWD digital television feed for only 200,000 kyat.

“I advised them (Shwe Nay Chi) to change the frequency of their new digital signal before they started running the service because otherwise people with Movie-5 would pick up the signal without buying the set top box,” he said.

U Ye Naing Soe said the Association of South East Asian Nations plans to make the entire region analogue-free by 2015. He added that several media agencies are already trying to lease their own television channels from the government, potentially opening the door to a whole range of new programmes in the future.

“Some private media agencies are trying to get their own channel through state-run television, like us. We’re already making a number of entertainment and education programmes for MWD-3 and I believe this will develop quickly if it’s allowed,” he said.

One such potential programme revolves around giving up-and- coming bands the chance to film a television show about themselves.

[Passage omitted: More about planned music programme]

Originally published by The Myanmar Times website, Rangoon, in English 28 Jul 08.

(c) 2008 BBC Monitoring Media. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.