Television broadcasting will be digitalized from 2025 achieving a giant leap in the television sector in Sri Lanka, Mass Media Minister Dullas Alahapperuma said.
He was speaking while launching the Digital Terrestrial Television Broadcasting (DTTB) Project in Colombo on Tuesday. The DTTB technology which replaces the current Analogue television transmission system with a digital transmission system, will allow all Sri Lankans a crystal clear television watching experience.
The DTTB project, which will be completed by 2025 was launched by Mass Media Minister Alahapperuma along with Japanese Ambassador to Sri Lanka Mizukoshi Hideaki.
The project to digitalize Sri Lankan television broadcasting is carried out by the Ministry of Mass Media in collaboration with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). It has been scheduled to start digitalize television broadcasting in 2023 and by 2025 the entire digitalization project will be completed.
Accordingly, all television channels will be broadcasted in digital format from the Lotus Tower. Therefore, all television sets in the country will receive digital signals of every available channel from the same location.
There are many advantages of the DTTB project including receiving sharp and clear images. Besides, the viewers need not rotate the TV antenna from channel to channel since all TV signals will be coming from same direction. Apart from clarity in pictures and high sound quality, digital broadcasting is useful for distance learning and mainly for disaster warning.
"The DTTB system delivers a digital viewing experience for the viewers while the high efficiency of the usage of the frequency spectrum enables a huge capacity improvement for additional TV channels within the same spectrum," Japanese Ambassador Mizukoshi Hideaki said.
“The DTTB project was initiated to convert a more than 40 year old Analogue Broadcasting System to digital terrestrial broadcasting platform. The history of television broadcasting in Sri Lanka goes back to 1979 when Sri Lanka first started television broadcasting. Since then, even after 40 years, still the Analogue broadcasting platform for free to air television broadcasting in Sri Lanka is used though the terrestrial digital TV broadcasting platforms came to the word around two decades ago,” Minister Alahapperuma said.
Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa addressing the event through the virtual platform said that he initiated the digitalization project in 2014 with the assistance of JICA. But, if the former Government, which came to power in 2015, did not stop the digitalization project, Sri Lankans would have been experiencing a digital television broadcasting experience from 2018.
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