The Hindu : DD plans TV in cars

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Apr 18, 2003

National

National

DD plans TV in cars

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI APRIL 17. After having tested the waters with the launch of its Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) project in the four metros recently, Doordarshan is now working towards making this technology available to motorists, so that they can tune in to television programmes while on the move.

Briefing journalists here today, the Director-General of Doordarshan, S.Y. Quraishi, said the public broadcaster was talking to Taiwanese and Japanese companies to develop television sets which can be mounted on vehicles and can translate digital signals back to analog format.

Though he refused to give more details on the plea that negotiations were still at an early stage, Mr. Quraishi said Doordarshan had embarked on this route in view of the fact that the four metros had a high vehicular population. Doordarshan's assessment is that this would be a good commercial proposition even if 20,000 people subscribed to it.

Admitting that the cost of the set-top box was still high, Mr. Quraishi was hopeful that market forces would make it affordable, as in the case of all new technologies.

As for the recent decision of the Prasar Bharati Board to allow Doordarshan to go on to the DTH platform, he said they had plans to accommodate 40 channels.

To begin with, 20 channels would be on the platform — a dozen would be Doordarshan channels and the remaining private free-to-air channels.

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