Digital-TV equipment flying off the shelves
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The markets for digital television sets and set-top boxes, as well as tablets with digital-TV tuners, are booming due to the launch of terrestrial digital-TV channels earlier this year, while more people are expected to cash in on the current distribution
Takorn Tantasith, secretary-general of the National Broadcasting and Telecommu-nications Commission (NBTC), said yesterday that some 2 million digital-TV sets had been put on the market, with about 1.7 million of them having already been snapped up even before voucher distribution commenced last Friday.
There are also another 400,000 TV sets waiting for NBTC approval to join the voucher scheme.
The NBTC expects digital-TV sales will hit around 17 million units within three years, he said.
There are presently about 2.4 million digital-TV set-top boxes in the market, of which most will be available under the voucher scheme. Another 2.4 million units are waiting to join the scheme.
The vouchers, each worth Bt690, can be used to buy either a digital-TV set or a digital-TV set-top box.
Surprisingly, Takorn said, the import of tablets with digital TV-tuners has reached 2 million units, with another 1 million awaiting NBTC import permits – even though the voucher scheme does not cover them.
Ninety per cent of them have been imported by mobile-phone distributor Samart-I-Mobile.
The NBTC vouchers reached 500,000 households in four provinces – Bangkok, Nonthaburi, Ayutthaya and Suphan Buri – on Monday.
Meanwhile, NBTC officials, led by Takorn, yesterday visited a few villages in Suphan Buri to monitor the digital-TV signal strength. Some villagers complained to the officials that the voucher value of Bt690 could only cover the cost of the box, which meant they had to pay for the antenna themselves.
