Lakhs of TVs go blank as digitalisation deadline ends

New Delhi: Television sets without set top boxes (STBs) in a number of households across Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata went blank as the deadline for users to switch over to cable TV digitisation ended at midnight yesterday. People watching various programmes faced a TV blackout when the clock struck 12. However, in some areas of Kolkata, a few television sets without STBs were found to be working. In Mumbai, nearly 20 per cent of the households have not installed STBs. [caption id=“attachment_510529” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Reuters[/caption] The Information and Broadcasting Ministry’s data for all four metros combined, showed that the digitisation of cable TV households including Direct To Home (DTH) connections had climbed to o 94 per cent. TV viewers in Chennai who have not made the change however, got some relief with the Madras High Court extending the switchover deadline to 5 November. A petition filed before the court in this regard had argued that only 1.64 lakh homes in the city had STBs and more than 30 lakh homes would go blank from November 1 if the deadline was not extended. The Bombay High Court, however, refused to grant more time to cable network providers in the city to switch to digital addressable system (DAS). However it asked the government to consider giving some relief to viewers during Diwali. According to ministry figures, Delhi has achieved 97 per cent digitisation (including DTH connections) while in Kolkata it is up to 85 per cent. This has not stopped West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today from threatening to launch an agitation if television transmission was blacked out after the 31 October deadline for digitisation. “When set top boxes are not in hand, analog system should be allowed to continue and the Centre has no right to blackout television. We can’t simply accept this stand of the Centre,” she said. PTI