Digital Television throughout the World - an Overview

Abstract

The numerous technical details of the various digital television standards have now been discussed. The only thing that is still missing is a report about the current development and spread of these technologies, and a look at the future. Digital satellite television (DVB-S) is available in Europe over numerous transponders of the ASTRA and Eutelsat satellites. Many streams can be received unencrypted. Complete receiving systems for DVB-S are available at low cost in many department stores. DVB-C, too, has become well established in the meantime. Digital terrestrial television has also become widely used in numerous countries and above all in Great Britain, where DVB-T started in 1998. DVB-T first spread in Scandinavia where Sweden is covered completely by DVB-T. Australia, too, was one of the first countries to have introduced DVB-T. In Australia, DVB-T is available mainly in the population centers along the Eastern and Southern coast. DVB-T is also being built up in South Africa and in India. In Europe, the current status is as follows: Autumn 2002 saw the start of DVB-T in Berlin and in August 2003, 7 data streams with more than 20 programs were on the air and analog television was being operated in parallel for only a brief period in simulcast mode and then switched off completely in August 2003, which certainly represented a minor revolution! DVB-T was designed to implement portable indoor reception. Reception is possible using simple indoor antennas from the heart of Berlin out to the outer suburbs in some cases. Naturally, there are restrictions in indoor reception due to the attenuation of buildings and other shadowing. In the years of 2003, 2004 and 2005, this type of reception known as "Anywhere Television" then also spread to the North-Rhine-Westphalia, Hamburg, Bremen, Hanover and Frankfurt regions and since May 30th 2005 also to the Munich and Nuremberg conurbation areas in Germany. The data rates per DVB-T channel are 13.27 Mbit/s, providing space for about 4 programs per channel. In most cases there are about 4 -6 frequencies in the air at any time. Mecklenburg followed in autumn 2005, and Stuttgart in 2006. The networks implemented in Germany are all designed as small isolated SFN regions with few transmitters.