Digital TV in Australia

David Heath
Wednesday, 09 July 2008 19:59

IT Policy - Regulation

The five major Australian cities are due to have analog TV turned off at the end of next year, progressively the remainder of the country will be forced to convert by 2013.  So, knowing that any equipment older than around 5 years will stop working in 18 months, how are we doing?

Overall, not very well!

Prior to the recent Federal election, there was a poorly annunciated program to switch off metropolitan analog TV by the end of this year (2008) and the remainder of the country was due to be serviced by digital by 2012 (with no clear analog turn-off date).

Incoming Minister Stephen Conroy quickly announced that the program would be set back a year and requested a taskforce to work on a detailed switchover timetable.

This was good news.  The overall scheme had already been set back significantly (I believe from a cut-over in 2005) but little work had been done to prepare Australian viewers.  Left neglected and Australia would have been in danger of falling by the way-side; after all, a significant number of European countries have already completed the switch.

A recent survey by the Australian Communication and Media Authority “Digital Television in Australian Homes 2007” showed pretty-much what we all suspected.  Overall, around 42% of households had the ability to receive digital broadcasts.  The higher the household income, the more likely a home was to have some kind of digital receiver (25% for those under $30,000 to 57% for those over $70,000).  Interestingly, approximately one third of all those surveyed were completely unaware that the analog service was to be discontinued.  Also of interest, hi-definition was rarely raised as a reason to convert; access to more channels was seen as far more important.

In the survey, of those households identified as current non-adopters, only 40% expressed a desire to convert.  Of the other 60%, the pervading mood ran the gamut from “At this late stage in my life I’m happy with what I’ve got” through “I didn’t even know you could even get free digital TV,” on to “I couldn’t be bothered!”