Sabahans to get 250,000 free MyTV decoders
Published on: Monday, August 10, 2015
Kota Kinabalu: Consumers looking for a cheaper alternative to pay TV services can now choose to subscribe to the Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) service after the project officially made inroad into Sabah on Sunday.The project successfully fired up its trial transmitter at Bukit Karatong near here on Aug 6 and its trial broadcast is accessible to viewers in Kota Kinabalu City as well as surrounding districts, including Penampang, Putatan, Papar, Tuaran and Kota Belud.Concurrently MYTV Broadcasting Sdn Bhd (MYTV), which operates the project, also kicked off the installation drive of its trial decoders to 1,500 selected households for free in the districts as part of its DTT trial transmission phase.
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For now, the new player only offers all the existing terrestrial free-to-air TV channels, namely TV1, TV2, TV3, NTV7, TV8, TV9 and TV AlHijrah, in digital quality but the number will increase to 30 free television channels and a choice of 'lite-pay' channels by early next year."I am pleased that Sabah had been chosen as MyTV's initial base to launch DTT in East Malaysia. Other than Bukit Karatong, two other transmitters have been installed in Gunung Andrassy in Tawau and Trig Hill in Sandakan."More importantly, 250,000 free decoders out of the two million sets to be distributed next year will go to Sabah," said Communication and Multimedia Minister Datuk Seri Salleh Keruak whose ministry oversees the whole project.Salleh said the project is part of the Government's key initiative in improving the living standards of the people as the nation races towards a developed nation status by 2020.
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"When our TV broadcasting becomes fully digitised, the people will be able to experience not only a better picture quality and much improved and stable voice output but also more channels to enjoy," he said. Salleh said this during the handing over of MyTV trial decoders to respondents in Kg Likas, here, Sunday.Also present were Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) Chairman Dato' Sri Halim Shafie, Group Chief Executive Officer of Altel Holdings, Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Yaacob, district officers and community leaders from the area.
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Salleh also visited the home of one of the respondents, Edimin Munip, 62, to witness the installation of a trial DTT decoder by MyTV. The DTT service is set to provide as many as 80 TV channels and 40 radio stations for free plus several pay channels once it is in full swing.So far, only four states, namely Pahang, Kelantan, Terengganu and now Sabah, have the first peek of the quality of this new network. However, MyTV is fast making its services available in other states by early next year.A total of 20,000 trial decoders are being distributed for free to selected households that do not currently subscribe to any paid TV service. Once DTT is officially rolled out next year, the sets will be replaced with the actual ones for free.Commenting on the challenges faced by MyTV during the test phase, Nik Abdul Aziz said on the whole, Sabah is geographically challenging, resulting in relatively poor analogue transmission especially in the rural and interior areas."Through this test phase, MyTV seeks to measure and validate the strength and modularity of our DTT in order to enable Sabahan viewers unrivalled TV watching experience," he said. MyTV was appointed by the Government to develop and operate the infrastructure and network facilities for DTT services in the country in order to migrate the national broadcasting system from analogue to digital by 2017.Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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