The future DVB-T replacement, dubbed DVB-T2, and set for core technology selection some time next month, will not, at least not initially, address mobile TV after all. This move, if seen through, will ensure that the DVB Project doesn’t confuse the world, offering a standard that could heavily impact on the DVB-H European preferred Mobile TV system. The replacement DVB-H standard DVB-H2 appears to have gone similarly quiet.
The DVB-T2 working group is understood to have pushed back that part of the specification which will make DVB appear more like the Japanese and US technologies ISDB-T and ASTC. With the addition of an ATSC M/H (mobile handheld) element sometime this Autumn, ATSC will allow for the delivery of HD, SD as well as Mobile TV (QVGA) from the same transmitters, and same signal. This will underpin the delivery of normal broadcast TV to handsets, from right across the broadcasting spectrum.
It has been a similar move that has rocketed Japan to the top of the Mobile TV stakes, where over 25 million devices have shipped, fed a signal from the existing TV broadcast transmitters using one of the 13 segments of the ISDB-T signal.
The request for technologies by DVB for its DVB-T2 second generation standard therefore had built into the spec the ability to add a mobile TV signal to DVB-T2 transmitters. We had thought that a DVB-H style timesliced multiplex could be made to sit within the DVB-T2 signal, and had raised the question of just what confusion this would give to the market place about whether or not to implement DVB-H in any given territory, or wait to have DVB-T2 emerge, in the 2010 timeframe, and deal with a shift to HD broadcasting and Mobile TV at the same time. Such a decision had the power to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt in the market, and devalue efforts to get on with Mobile TV now, especially in Europe, rather than wait until post analog switch off, when the new DVB-T2 would be available.
The shift is, as we understand it from people that attended recent DVB working group meetings, was subtle, and came from commercial wisdom rather than technical problems. The requirement wasn’t eliminated from the technical specification, but pushed backwards in time. In June, when the first draft specification will be published, we would now not expect to see any element of the technology addressing mobile TV, but instead focus on the improved throughput efficiencies (of 30 to 50%) compared to DVB-T, which, along with a wholesale shift to MPEG 4 encoding, would mean that future DVB broadcast services would have plenty of room for expansion into HD services post analog switch off.
Already DVB-T is the most widely deployed Digital Terrestrial Television standard with services on air in over thirty countries and more than 60 million receivers deployed. Of course around 44 million of those are just in the UK and France, and many of the countries which plan to adopt it have either only just taken the decision or are ramping up numbers in Southeast Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.
The DVB-T2 web site now has moved to reposition the standard somewhat, saying that the new standard is not going to be designed so that these countries can leapfrog Europe, where DVB-T originated, but instead the ‘correct’ order in which to proceed is to build DVB-T services under the full knowledge that there are cheap €30 ($47) set tops available now, and then as these multiplexes fill up, begin adding DVB-T2 for greater capacity, once Europe has knocked the kinks out of that technology in the 2010 ‘ 2011 timeframe.
This decision to delay the mobile element of DVB-T2 is perhaps driven primarily by commercial vested interests, and it will have a huge positive impact on DVB-H. Had DVB-T2 had a prominent route to mobile TV, then countries like ASEAN and much of South America, might have dumped DVB-H and moved wholesale to DVB-T2. The problem now is that DVB-H networks can be expensive to build, and especially difficult to cost justify when using a purely free to air mobile TV service.
This reinforces a notion we have put forward in our recent Mobile TV report, that the whole of South America is likely to opt for a technology that better fits with free to air mobile TV, and could either follow Brazil down the ISDB-T route, (perhaps Argentina next), or follow the US down the ASTC M/H route, as we expect Mexico to do.
Many South American countries have paid lip service to DVB technologies, but are not yet fully committed, and the failure to protect a roadmap that includes DVB-T2 supporting Mobile TV may be damaging, hence the idea that is it delayed, not eliminated from the spec.
The DVB projects specifically warns that DVB-T2 should not, in the short to medium term, be considered for the launch of free-to-air multichannel standard definition services targeted at migrating a general population from analog to digital, but pushes DVB-T as ideal for that purpose.