After an intense lobbying effort by Brazil, Argentina decided to go with the Japanese-Brazilian ISDB-Tb rather than the American ASTC or European DVB standards. Argentina’s annoucement follows Peru’s April decision to go with the standard.
After much initial optimism, digital TV has been very slow to take hold in Brazil due to high-priced decoders and limited coverage. I have been of the opinion that the Digital TV market really needs the World Cup to spark widespread adoption as the previous World Cup was the driver or LCD and plasma TVs. As the announcement was made only last Friday, there might not be enough time in Argentina to get a bounce from the World Cup. In Brazil, nearly two years after its official launch, digital TV coverage is still limited to 23 cities. Further, many of these markets enjoy only one or two digital channels. http://mosquitoeletronico.blog.br/index.php/guia-tv-digital-no-brasil/
Additional markets and increased volume are good for the standard, perhaps leading to lower decoder prices, but it is still going to be a while before the digital terrestrial TV becomes ubiquitous in any of the three markets.