All channels will stop programming to show a 30-second advertisement in Hindi and English informing viewers to change to digital set top boxes before October 31. The advertisement ends with the warning "Go digital or go blank" in English and "Set top box lagaye ya TV bhool jaye" in Hindi.
The blackout has been planned for the four metros: Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai, where the first phase of digitization is expected to kick in from November 1. The move to phase out analogue addressable systems and shift to digital has been mooted by the information and broadcasting ministry. The deadline for shifting to digital was June 30 but it could not be met due to a several reasons, including a lack of set top boxes and other procedural problems.
The number of TV households in India is estimated to be around 147 million. The cable industry has grown from 0.4 million cable homes in January 1992 to an estimated 94 million cable TV homes in 2011 with more than 800 registered channels. Of these around 160 are pay channels. There are a large number of channels which are transmitted as free channels. The rollout for digitization has been slow but industry experts say this is likely to pick up pace. In the four metros about 50,000 set top boxes are being seeded every week with Mumbai showing maximum progress. There are about 10-12 million TV homes in the four metros of which over 50% have been digitized so far.
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