DVB-T2 Forges Ahead

Friday, September 10th, 2010
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Second Generation Terrestrial Standard Gathers Strong Worldwide Interest

AMSTERDAM — The DVB Project is pleased with the momentum achieved by its second-generation digital terrestrial standard, DVB-T2, since its first commercial launch earlier this year in the UK.

The UK’s Freeview HD service was launched officially in March this year. At present the service is offered in a number of regions and is expected to become widely available during 2011. The economies of scale that have already been generated by the take-up of the new DVB-T2 services have made receivers more affordable with set-top boxes retailing for as low as 70 GBP.

Elsewhere in Europe, Italy has seen the recent launch of DVB-T2 for pay TV services. In Finland, the operator DNA Oy is to launch two HDTV multiplexes in VHF band III using the DVB-T2 with H.264 encoding. The services are to be commercially available to 40% of Finnish households by the end of 2010 with coverage expected to reach 60% in 2011. The Swedish broadcaster Teracom has commenced the upgrade of its network to provide HD services using DVB-T2, which are scheduled to be on-air in early 2011.

Advanced trials are currently taking place in Austria, Denmark, the Czech Republic and Germany. With the positive results of the UK launch, more and more countries are considering launching services using DVB-T2 in the near future. Outside Europe, the first countries that are considering DVB-T2 are Australia, India, Kenya, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.

The technology and the principal participants in its development within DVB have been recognised with awards from the IEEE International Symposium on Consumer Electronics and The Royal Television Society. DVB-T2 is currently shortlisted for an IBC Innovation Award.

Peter Siebert, DVB’s Executive Director said, “We are delighted and proud of the enthusiasm for and the progress made by DVB-T2. It is exceptional to see a standard move from the drawing board to market implementation with the speed that DVB-T2 has achieved. The whole process is a credit to DVB and all those that participated in creating it success”.

DVB-T2 is the world’s most advanced digital terrestrial transmission system offering higher efficiency, robustness and flexibility. It introduces the latest modulation and coding techniques to enable the highly efficient use of valuable terrestrial spectrum for the delivery of audio, video and data services to fixed, portable and mobile devices. These new techniques give DVB-T2 a 50% increase in efficiency over any other DTT system in the world.