Pretoria - A traditional leader from a small town outside of Harding in KwaZulu-Natal has welcomed an Imbizo held to explain the process of moving from an analogue television signal to a digital broadcasting system.
Chief Ntamonde Mthetho Machi said Saturday’s in-depth consultation by Communications Minister Faith Muthambi and her digital migration team helped him better understand digital migration.
“In the past, I’ve heard people talking about digital migration, but today’s digital migration Imbizo provided me with clear and relevant information about it.
“Now all of us know that the face of broadcasting is going to change very soon in our country. I really appreciate the leadership of the Minister who values the importance of consulting people before implementing a project. The secret of a successful project is consultation.”
He urged people to support government’s digital migration programme.
Head of the Digital Migration Programme, Solly Mokoetle, explained to the more than 2000 residents who were gathered at the local school about how they will benefit from digital migration.
“Very soon, we will be training people who will install set-top boxes [STBs] in your area and ... we are not going to parachute people from other provinces to come and install your STBs. We will train local people to install the STBs for you,” he said.
In order to receive the digital signal on current analogue TV sets, households will need STBs that convert the digital signal into analogue signal.
Minister Muthambi said through the digital transition in broadcasting residents will see an improvement in the quality of what is available on TV.
“As a country, we’ve reached a milestone in this transition to digital broadcasting which is a more efficient way of transmitting sound and pictures and which offers a number of potential benefits,” she said.
On Friday, Minister Muthambi officially launched the registration process for set-top boxes in Keimoes, under the Kai Garib Municipality in the Northern Cape. This is near the location of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project.
“It is a very important milestone in the digital terrestrial television migration project and signals the start of our long-awaited migration from terrestrial to digital broadcasting.
“Households with television sets in the SKA area will now receive fully subsidised set-top-boxes once they have completed the registration process,” she said.
Government will distribute five million free STBs to indigent TV-owning households who register. - SAnews.gov.za
