Mintman

I think there is a little confusion here - I would doubt very much that all or maybe even any of the television sets currently sold in Thailand would have a DVB-T2 receiver, as the decision has only just been made to adopt that standard for the country.

The confusion I see is that perhaps people may think that a TV set with HD is the same thing - it is not - they are two different components altogether.

The screen is the part you watch (obviously) and that is the bit that displays an HD picture (usually 16:9 or maybe 14:9 aspect ratio - the ratio of screen width to screen height). Virtually all the modern sets currently on sale in the country do have this capability - to DISPLAY an HD picture, and that usually also means that they have HDMI or component inputs that will accept an HD video signal - thats why you can watch the HD set-top box from True or watch an HD DVD etc.

The part of the TV set that actually RECEIVES the digital signal from the broadcaster is a different thing - it has to perform basically the same function as the True set-top box - it actually receives the digital broadcast, and then selects the channel you wish to watch, and decodes it into an HDMI or component (or whatever) VIDEO signal and that is then displayed on the screen exactly the same as if it was connected to a DVD player or the True STB. The receiver must be designed to receive the specific type of signal and to be able to decode the channels within that signal.

So to sumarise - the TV set has two main parts, the receiver and the display. On most TV sets they have a receiver built in (and it suits the current type of transmission in that country). The display can be set to see the picture from the in-built receiver (usually analogue in most TVs at present), or an external input (often HDMI) to connect to say the True STB.

I would expect that Thailand will end up with various low-cost Set Top Boxes specificaly for receiving the DVB-T2 broadcasts - in the same way as happens in the UK and Australia. These will connect to an external input to the TV set.

During the changeover period, you still have the analogue transmissions for a certain amount of time, and in say a couple of years, when the majority of people have had time to buy the new digital receiver box, or have replaced their TV with one that has the digital receiver inside it, then the analogue transmissions are shut down (the government then can re-allocate those frequencies for other purposes).