The Southern African Digital Broadcasting Association (SADIBA) Conference took place last week, April 15–17 in Johannesburg, designed to update the Southern African media experts on digital media. Among the participants was Digital Radio Mondiale, which gave its own presentation and panel discussion on the April 17.
DRM’s presentation, given by Ruxandra Obreja, DRM Consortium chairperson, focused on the DRM standard, its possibilities and the challenges of manufacturing digital receivers in Africa. Obreja gave facts of DRM developments in countries like Asia, Latin America and Europe, as well as demonstrations of audio quality for AM.
DRM also offered updates on its Southern Africa platform, headed by Dr. Roelf Petersen, including the trial results from Radio Pulpit. The trial has been extended until October of 2015 and will now be joined by Sentech for the remainder of the trial.
Other presentations during SADIBA included “Update on Progress with the Transition to DTT in the Region,” “Trends in Broadcasting: SD, HD, UHD, Terrestrial, Satellite, OTT,” “Content and New Innovations in DAB+” and “DAB+ in South Africa.”
SADIBA will use ideas from the conference to help a recommendation paper on the introduction of digital radio in South Africa to present to the Minister.
