Ofcom consults on BBC HD Freeview DRM proposal

Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator and competition authority, is considering a proposal from BBC Free to View Ltd (the “BBC”) that would require the inclusion of content management technology in receivers for High Definition Television (HDTV) services on the Freeview Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) platform. This technology would enable broadcasters to control the copying of content from high definition receivers to other consumer devices and its distribution to others over the internet.

The BBC’s request for an amendment to Condition 6 of the Multiplex B Licence would enable it to deliver the EPG data for services carried on this multiplex in a closed rather than an open transmission format, for the purposes of securing content management. Ofcom has reserved capacity on Multiplex B for HDTV services. The BBC intends to use this change to increase the volume of receivers that are compatible with content management.

The Service Information (SI) data delivered on all six UK DTT multiplexes, including Multiplex B, is currently broadcast in an open format using European standards. Indeed, the Multiplex B Licence requires, at Condition 6, that EPG data be made freely available to receiver manufacturers. The BBC is proposing to use a variant for delivering SI, which uses Huffman Coding to compress the data before transmission. SI broadcast using this approach cannot be decoded by existing standard definition (SD) receivers and the BBC intends to use it first on Multiplex B to deliver SI data for HDTV services which require new HD receivers.

In order to utilise the SI data broadcast using Huffman Coding, Huffman Code look-up tables developed by the BBC are needed to decode the data in receivers. If approved, the proposed licence amendment would enable the BBC to broadcast SI on Multiplex B using Huffman Coding and to only make the Huffman Code look-up tables available to receiver manufacturers who implement content management, subject to Ofcom approval of the specific proposals. In this way, the BBC intends to increase the volume of receivers that are compatible with content management. The SI data carried on other DTT multiplexes for SD services would be unaffected by this approach, and existing DTT receivers would be able to continue to provide an EPG for SD services.

Closing Date for Responses: 2 April 2010

More: Content management on the HD Freeview platform