GMA Affordabox is a Philippine

ISDB-T Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting (ISDB; Japanese: , ''Tōgō dejitaru hōsō sābisu'') is a Japanese broadcasting standard for digital television (DTV) and digital radio. ISDB supersedes both the NTSC-J analog television system and th ...

digital terrestrial television Digital terrestrial television (DTTV or DTT, or DTTB with "broadcasting") is a technology for terrestrial television in which land-based (terrestrial) television stations broadcast television content by radio waves to televisions in consumers' ...

provider distributed and being marketed by

GMA New Media GMA New Media, Inc. (or NMI) is the digital media and technology arm of GMA Network Inc. which offers interactive applications in the television, mobile, web, marketing and online gaming industry. Its headquarters are located at the GMA Network ...

, a subsidiary of

GMA Network, Inc GMA may refer to: Broadcasting * GMA Network, a Philippine television channel * GMA Network Inc., a Philippine broadcasting company * GMA TV, a fake news website which imitated the legitimate GMA News website * '' Good Morning America'', a morn ...

. The service distributes digital set-top boxes and

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dongles with

free-to-air Free-to-air (FTA) services are television (TV) and radio services broadcast in unencrypted form, allowing any person with the FTA Receiver, appropriate receiving equipment to receive the signal and view or listen to the content without requiring ...

digital TV channels,

broadcast markup language Broadcast Markup Language, or BML, is an XML-based standard developed by Japan's Association of Radio Industries and Businesses as a data broadcasting specification for digital television broadcasting. It is a data-transmission service allowing tex ...

emergency warning broadcast system J-Alert ( ja, J－ALERT/Jアラート, J Arāto; full name ja, 全国瞬時警報システム, Zenkoku Shunji Keihō Shisutemu, National Early Warning System, label=none) is the early warning system used in Japan. J-Alert was launched in Febru ...

, functional auto-on alert, digital display, and info display services to select areas in the Philippines.

History

In June 2010, the

National Telecommunications Commission The National Telecommunications Commission (NTC; fil, Pambansang Komisyon sa Telekomunikasyon) is an attached agency of the Department of Information and Communications Technology responsible for the supervision, adjudication and control over a ...

announced that it would formally adopt the Japanese standard

for digital broadcasting and issued a circular commanding all the country's television networks to switch-off their analog services on December 31, 2015, at 11:59 p.m.

Philippine Standard Time Philippine Standard Time (PST or PhST; fil, Pamantayang Oras ng Pilipinas), also known as Philippine Time (PHT), is the official name for the time zone used in the Philippines. The country only uses one time zone, at an offset of UTC+08:00, b ...

(

UTC+8 UTC+08:00 is an identifier for a time offset from UTC of +08:00. With an estimated population of 1.708 billion living within the time zone, roughly 24% of the world population, it is the most populous time zone in the world, as well as a ...

). But due to delay of the release of the implementing rules and regulations for digital television broadcast, the target date was moved to 2023. In February 2013, GMA Network was able to conduct field tests of digital broadcast using the Japanese standard ISDB-T in digital television on UHF Channel 27 (551.143 MHz), despite they remain unconvinced saying European standard DVB-T2 is superior to ISDB-T. However, in October 2013, the NTC issued a draft memorandum circular adopting the Japanese standard as the sole standard in the delivery of digital terrestrial television (DTT) services in the Philippines. On May 15, 2019, GMA's digital broadcast was moved to its permanent frequency on Channel 15, due to its former frequency, Channel 27 will used by

GMA News TV GMA News TV (GNTV; visually rendered in its logo in all capital letters as GMA NEWS TV) is a 24-hour Philippine-based international pay television channel owned by Citynet Network Marketing and Productions Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of GM ...

beginning on June 4, as the blocktime deal between GMA and ZOE terminated, resulting to its said channel's former frequency Channel 11 became silent the following day. In June 2020, images of GMA's owned DTV set-top box were surrounded online and a teaser was revealed on June 17. GMA Network officially launched GMA Affordabox on June 26, 2020 during '' Tutok to Win sa Wowowin''.

Offered services

GMA Affordabox

GMA Network's flagship product digital set-top boxes intended for home use.

GMA Now

On December 12, 2020, GMA Network released its mobile dongle designed for

-capable Android smartphone, dubbed as GMA Now on

Lazada Lazada Group ( t/a Lazada) is an international e-commerce company and one of the largest e-commerce operators in Southeast Asia, with over 10,000 third-party sellers as of November 2014, and 50 million annual active buyers as of September 2019. ...

and

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online. It allows users to watch free-to-air channels on their Android smartphones and has extra features such as a

video-on-demand Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos without a traditional video playback device and the constraints of a typical static broadcasting schedule. In the 20th century, broadcasting in the form of o ...

feature to stream GMA's online content, a Groupee Chat (

web chat A web chat is a system that allows users to communicate in real-time using easily accessible web interfaces. It is a type of Internet online chat distinguished by its simplicity and accessibility to users who do not wish to take the time to insta ...

), and interactive promos to join.. It also supports Picture-in-picture mode and

screen recording A screencast is a digital recording of computer screen output, also known as a video screen capture or a screen recording, often containing audio narration. The term ''screencast'' compares with the related term ''screenshot''; whereas screenshot ...

. GMA Network officially launched GMA Now on February 7, 2021 during ''

All-Out Sundays ''All-Out Sundays'' (also known as ''AOS'' or ''AyOS'') is a Philippine television variety show broadcast by GMA Network. Hosted by Alden Richards, Julie Anne San Jose, Rayver Cruz, Ken Chan, Rita Daniela, Christian Bautista, Aicelle Santos, ...

,'' and it also announced it will support for iPhone users soon.

Channel lineup

UHF Channel 15 (479.143 MHz)¹ ¹ For

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only, channel and frequency varies on regional stations.

Channel and frequency

Notes

References

{{CATV Africa, Asia, Middle East and Oceania GMA Network (company) Digital television in the Philippines Products introduced in 2020 2020 establishments in the Philippines