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DD to become completely digital by 2012

National channel Doordarshan’s transmission would be completely changed into digital by the year 2012 and the analog technology would be phased out by that period, according to Prasar Bharati CEO Rajiv Ratan Shah.

Doordarshan’s DD-1, News, International and Sport channels had already gone digital and were available via pas-4 and the Metro channels would go digital by June 2000, Shah said after inaugurating the ‘Broadcast India ’99’ expo.

Conversion of all Metro channels into digital had already been sanctioned. However, they would continue transmission in both digital and analog as “consumer cannot phase out the equipment”, he added.

Shah said the US and the European countries have set a time frame of 2006 and 2010 respectively to completely switch over to digital. “We too expect to complete this by 2010, but the plan period will go up and hence 2012,” he added.

On the quality of DD’s digital transmission, Shah said “there are some problems on the sound scale and synchronisation. It will be solved soon.”

Referring to the DD Sports channel, he said it will become a pay channel “some day”. “As of now, it is a free channel, but it will become a pay channel. No time frame has been set for the purpose,” he added. On the complaints of poor quality of DD on cable, he said cable operators will not need any receiver decoder as DD-1 and DD- were clearly available. “whenever we encrypt the channel, we will give them decoders,” Shah added.