Senior DirecTV executives, meeting with Argentina’s President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, say they expect to invest $32 million into the country about one third of which will go into the manufacturing of locally-produced set-top boxes. The balance will go into building a new broadcast centre at San Isidro, to the north of Buenos Aires.

The set-top boxes will be produced in the government-designated special production zone in the extreme south of the country, in Tierra del Fuego. The DirecTV news added that many of the boxes would be exported to other Latin American countries. This year about 1.7 million boxes would be produced, with about 650,000 units exported. Pace and Technicolor are leading the manufacturing charge, with Newsan, BGH and Videola also contributing to production. Venezuela, for example, is likely to take between 800,000-1 million boxes annually.

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