Juan Pablo Conti ©RapidTVNews | 21-09-2011


The town of Puerto Deseado in Santa Cruz, Argentina, could become the second in the southern province to switch on digital terrestrial television (DTT) transmissions before the end of this year.

A few weeks ago, the capital of Santa Cruz, Río Gallegos, joined Bariloche (in the Río Negro province) as the two only cities to host an operational DTT transmission site in Argentina's Patagonian region.

Luis Mario Villalta, a member of the Advising Council for SATVD-T (Argentinean System for Digital Terrestrial Television), confirmed that work is ongoing to ensure that Puerto Deseado inaugurates its transmission site within the next few months.

"We are in the phase of completing the technical preparation and obtaining the necessary permits and approvals to build the antenna tower," the official was quoted as saying by El Periódico Austral. The 50m to 60m high antenna mast will be mounted by the state-controlled company Arsat.

Besides the two other DTT masts in the Patagonia, another 21 high-power transmission sites have already been switched on throughout the country: two of them in the national capital, eight in the Buenos Aires province, two in Córdoba, and one each in Chaco, Jujuy, Formosa, La Rioja, San Juan, Tucumán, Entre Ríos, Misiones and Santa Fe.

At present, the digital line-up available on the DTT platform consists of 16 channels, with minor modifications depending on the area of the country where the service is multiplexed.

The Argentine government has already handed out over a million set-top boxes free of charge to lower-income families, while a growing number of equipment manufacturers are marketing compliant devices through national and regional retail outlets. Some of the newest TV models even already come equipped with an embedded SATVD-T decoder.