Digital Television and Digital Convergence

This book deals with the transition from the analog to the digital world and its impact on the market, everyday life, and the academy, offering a more detailed view of these transformations in South America and the Caribbean. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are changing the relationships among subjects, be they social, economic, cultural, educational, or environmental, as well as in the realms of behavior and affect. Despite this influence, technology can enlarge the participation of social actors, increasing the visibility of the individual and collective, as never seen before, but we live in countries with significant digital differences. Right now we are at the bridge—we ar leaving the analog world and moving into the digital world—and we also live in paradoxical societies, with important and profound economic, social, cultural, and linguistic differences. On the one side, we have new technologies and a small number of people eager to acquire them. On the other side, we have Latin American countries, where 80% of residents have prepaid cell phones or where in countries, like Bolivia and Paraguay, access to the Internet does not reach 5%. From the viewpoint of the emerging industry of digital content in Latin America and the Caribbean, we analyze the potential of different platforms—free-to-air digital TV, digital radio and cinema, computers, games, cell phones, the convergence of media, and interactive digital content production.