Start of regular broadcasts and implementation status
Regular SBTVD broadcasts started on 2 December 2007, initially in São Paulo. Until 12 June 2010, the system had also launched in these other Brazilian cities: Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Goiânia, Porto Alegre, Curitiba, Campinas, Cuiabá, Salvador, Florianópolis, Vitória, Uberlândia, São José do Rio Preto, Teresina, Santos, Brasília, Campo Grande, Fortaleza, Recife, João Pessoa, Sorocaba, Mogi das Cruzes, Ribeirão Preto, Manaus, Belém, Joinville, Aracaju, Londrina, São Luís, Araraquara and Natal, among others.[8][9]
In the beginning, from the broadcasters' point of view, the DTV implementation in Brazil seemed to be very successful if compared with the implementation process in other countries. After 16 months, the digital TV signal covered almost 50% of the Brazilian population. The country successfully finished the transition from analog to digital TV in December 2018, when analog TV was phased out in most regions where it was still broadcasting. Citizens with low income who still had old TV sets (i.e. unable to receive digital TV) were given set top boxes to enable them to continue watching TV. However, there are some less populated regions where the regulator accepted phasing out to be postponed on 30 September 2023.[10]
A new push in set-top box and DTV sets sales was expected with the final specification of Ginga middleware that will allow interactive use of TV.
Ginga 1.0 (a first implementation of Ginga) was already released for use by set-top box/DTV manufacturers, using NCL (Nested Context Language)/Lua as its declarative programming language. That part of Ginga is called Ginga-NCL. However, the complete Ginga middleware specification was planned to present the declarative NCL module and procedural Java module to allow programmers, manufacturers and users to take the best from the two environments: declarative and procedural.
The Java part of Ginga, called Ginga-J, had its specification approved by the SBTVD Forum in April 2009. The same forum declared that the APIs set developed by Sun Microsystems, called Java-DTV, is the standard for SBTVD system, after negotiations with Sun Microsystems to reduce royalties in 15%. Hence, the royalty cost defined by Sun for Java-DTV is much more affordable than that charged by GEM APIs owners (GEM middleware is used in DVB-T – the European DTV standard). That will benefit development of interactive set-top boxes and TV sets keeping them cheaper than if GEM was used as middleware or even if GEM APIs were used with Ginga-J.[11]
In the 3rd quarter 2009 the first set-top boxes and TV sets with complete Ginga middleware (Ginga-NCL and Ginga-J) were available in the market. That date match with the release of first interactive programs to be broadcast by television companies.
At launch on 2 December 2007, set-top boxes were available for prices ranging between R$900 (~US$450) and R$1200 (~US$600), inhibiting sales. But after 8 months the prices dropped quickly to around R$300 (~US$150). The Federal Government announced subsidies worth 1 billion Reais (~US$556 million) so these prices faced a new reduction phase.[12]
By May 2009 a 42 inch LCD TV full HD (1920×1080) with built-in digital TV tuner and special characteristics such as double presentation rate (120 Hz) and exceptional contrast (50.000:1) was being sold for R$3,600.00 (~US$1,800.00) in São Paulo City, a very impressive price reduction for such a quality product, and other basic devices present even lower prices. However, until September 2009 the smallest TV that could be bought with an integrated digital tuner was a 32 inch LCD TV. This was slowing down the adoption of digital TV in Brazil, since most people that watch FTA TV cannot afford buying expensive LCD TVs, and 21 and 29 inch CRT TVs were still very popular among the low income population and could be bought for about R$400–600 (US$200–300). From 2010 on, it was mandated that all TV sets sold in Brazil to be ISDB-T compatible. Furthermore, in the period between 2009 and 2013, Brazil's economy improved, which encouraged family consumption. This, associated with a rapid drop in prices of LCD and LED-backlit TVs quickly led to a more widespread usage of DTV. In December 2018, Brazil phased out analog transmissions in most of the country, leaving some regions to phase out analog transmissions on 30 September 2023. A massive distribution program of set top boxes to low income citizens who still had old TV sets (therefore unable to receive ISDB-T) was performed between 2015 and 2018. As of 2021, LED-backlit TV are much more affordable (like in most of the world), a 40" LED-backlit TV can be bought for about US$300.00.
Sales of mobile receivers (for laptops, mobile DTV sets and mobile phones with a built-in DTV receiver) were increasing very fast and it seems that mobility was perceived by consumers as a more attractive SBTVD/ISDB-T feature than HD or Full HD definition. The SBTVD/ISDB-T standard allows a very impressive mobile reception, with high quality and steady image, without noise, excellent audio and very robust reception even in the presence of signal reflection, electromagnetic or impulsive interference.
Peru, Argentina, Chile and Venezuela were planning the deployment before announcing their analog shutdown date.
