The 9th ASEAN Digital Broadcasting Meeting was held on 9 November 2010 at the Concorde Hotel, Singapore. The Meeting was chaired by Mr. Haji Idris bin Hj Md Ali, Director Radio Television Brunei Darussalam, and co-chaired by Mr. Lim Chin Siang, Director IT & Technology, Media Development Authority of Singapore.
The Meeting focused their deliberation on recommendations made by the 10th AMRI held in November 2009 in Vientiane, Lao PDR, namely to develop guidelines on digital switch-over; to develop a work plan on training on HD development and co-productions; and to explore collaboration with dialogue partners on digital terrestrial TV deployment and capacity building.
The ASEAN Member States updated the Meeting on the status on DTV implementation in their respective country. The Meeting noted that the Philippines is currently reviewing the options to adopt either the DVB-T/T2 or the ISDB-T for their transmission standard.
In 2007, ASEAN adopted the DVB-T as the terrestrial transmission standard. With the development of DVB-T2, Members were encouraged to progress towards DVB-T2 to avail themselves of the many advantages of DVB-T2 in the long term.
The Meeting agreed to form an interactive service technical committee to establish a knowledge database that may include an online forum, a quarterly newsletter and a design pattern library.
The Meeting recognised the need to have a clear direction for frequency planning to be used for long term DTV transmission. The Meeting agreed to create a new task force on spectrum management.
The Meeting further developed the Guidelines for Digital switch-over and reiterate the importance of continued dialogue and sharing of information among ASEAN countries and with the Dialogue Partners.
The Meeting affirmed the importance of training on high definition content production and content protection. The Meeting acknowledged the need to seek funding to support the capacity building efforts. The Members were encouraged to share outcomes of studies and surveys of digital content development to identify TV viewers’ needs.
