[opendtv] Analog sutoff delayed in Italy

According to

http://www.dgtvi.net/stat/Aree_All_Digital/Page1.html

analog shutoff in the regions of Valle d'Aosta and Sardinia has been delayed 
from the previously mentioned 31 July 2006. It seems the analog shutoff 
jitters affect all but the Germans.

The new dates are 1 March 2008 for Sardinia and 1 October 2008 for Valle 
d'Aosta. This news reported on 22 June.

The reason given for the delay, in

<http://www.dgtvi.net/stat/News_e_Eventi/Notizie_DTT/Rinviato_Switch_off_al_2008_in_Sardegna_e_Val_d_Aosta.html>

is that there is still a large percentage of viewers in each region without 
DVB-T decoder.

The Minister of Communications also said that to promote the transition, the 
govt and broadcasters are entering a collaborative phase. And that lots of 
emphasis will have to go into deciding content is offered over DTT. That 
sounds familiar.

Another interesting development is that in these regions, they will be 
shutting off at least one national analog TV network by 1 March 2007. A 
technique that worked in Germany, to promote the transition. We'll see.

But by *far* the most revealing of all comments comes from the "governor" of 
Sardinia, Renato Soru. Not unlike the silly hype perpetrated both here and 
in the UK, in the early days of DTT, which vaguely linked digital TV with 
the Internet in mysterious ways, Renato Soru said that he had been led to 
believe that transition to DTT would have a heavy "broadband Internet 
access" element to it. He said that while providing broadband Internet 
access is important to Sardinia, because not many have it, an increase in TV 
channels made available OTA is not in demand.

And in the haste to deploy interactive STBs, he said, the interactive STBs 
deployed provide Internet access only through the local telco, which 
"privatizes a piece of the Internet."

This is the problem created by senseless hype. Decision makers become 
completely uninformed. Pieces of the Internet have always been privatized, 
for one, and interactive STBs by definition can only work if they are linked 
to some ISP (i.e. a private piece of the Internet). And DTT has nothing at 
all to do with broadband Internet access, and never has had. Even if DTT 
might show up in some form at your PC, and even if broadcasters and STB 
manufacturers provide some tricky way to ease the link between an ad and an 
Internet site, so a simple remote can be used to perform the web surfing 
function.

Eventually, the unadorned truth comes out and bites you in the derriere. How 
many times have we argued exactly these points on this very list?

Bert

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