Russia needs to take action in order to speed up the transition to HD services, which, as things currently stand, could take up to 10 years.
Quoted by AKTR and ComNews, Oleg Vatulin, the first deputy general director of RuSat, said that a qualitative leap in technology, based on two factors, is required.
The first is the use of coders and decoders that can compress digital data without the loss of quality and transfer it to a narrow bandwidth.
The second is running more multiplexes or switching to DVB-T2, as well as opting for the Ka-band, which has more bandwidth than the Ku-band.
Vatulin also identified the high cost of producing HDTV channels and their distribution via satellite as problems currently holding up their rollout in Russia.
Another factor is the high cost of receiving HD services, with an eight-channel package in the format currently costing around R3,600 (€85.6) a month.
