Giving its support to Japan’s ISDB digital television standard over the European alternative, the Philippine association of broadcasters (KBP) believes it has found the best fit for Filipino viewers – ‘not to mention that it costs less than DVB2, its European counterpart’.

Although ISDB has a lower channel capacity than DVB2, KPB Television Committee Chairman, Atom Henares believes that ‘ISDB is a pro-Filipino standard because it has features that can address better the needs of the Filipino viewers’. He maintains that ISDB’s capacity is sufficient for local broadcast networks and that Filipine viewers should not pay for channels that might not be required.

Additionally, the cost of ISDB set-top boxes is lower than those used for the rival standard –set-top boxes required for analogue TV sets to receive the DVB-T2 signal are 60 per cent higher than those for ISDB.

In 2010, the National Telecommunications Commission issued a memorandum adopting the Japanese standard in the migration to digital TV, but the deal was put on hold recently by the Government to allow an evaluation of DVB2, which is the second generation of the DVB standard.