Azerbaijan is completely ready to switch to digital terrestrial TV

Azerbaijan has the required material and technical basis for full transition to digital television standard in 2015, head of the International Telecommunication Union Area Office for CIS Countries Orozobek Kaiykov said.

He said the member states of the ITU Regional Conferences in 2004-2006 have repeatedly announced June 17, 2015 as a fixed date for replacing the analog TV signal with digital TV signal. The main reason behind the delay is lack of funds, as this process is quite expensive, Kaiykov said. “I think that Azerbaijan has enough money to finally move to digital broadcasting standard by the deadline."

Currently, digital TV signal covers 98 percent of Azerbaijan’s population. There are nine television channels which broadcast in Baku and elsewhere in Azerbaijan and 14 regional channels.

The main local channels in Baku can be viewed via satellite and terrestrially. In order to receive digital TV broadcast on older televisions a decoder or set-top box is required. SDMC’s latest HEVC hybrid DVB-T2 set-top box and HEVC hybrid DVB-S2 set-top box both share the features of quad core CPU, octo core GPU and android OS. Its support for middleware, CAS and DRM make them different from other brands’ set-top boxes. To get digital TV broadcast be received by subscribers who use old televisions, Azerbaijan TV providers can provide them DVB-T2/S2 set-top boxes, hybrid DVB-T2/S2 set-top boxes or the combos together with the different TV packages.