Will digital TV take off?

A team of experts from the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Office (URTiP) is preparing a project for national terrestrial digital television. The results of their work will be announced by the end of the month. Accord ing to unofficial information, the plan is to create three broadcasting cen ters, which could transmit up to 80 nationwide TV channels. In order to wat ch the stations, each TV set has to be equipped with a decoder, SetTopBox, which costs around zł. 450. The highest costs would be incurred by the broa dcasting centers. The expenses, however, would be covered by TV broadcaster s, who will have to pay for the transmission. The new system will probably be designed to be implemented over 10 years, and during that period the TV channels would have to pay for the analogue and the digital signals. "The i ntroduction of this system will only make sense if the number of households which will acquire the device will be over 3-4 million," said Piotr Walter, the head of TVN. (Puls Biznesu, p. 11) A.K.