– 10 – 62216 IEC:2009(E)
INTRODUCTION
Television has evolved over the last halfcentury from an up-market entertainmentmediumto
becoming the major information tool around the world. Television is available to virtually all
people around the globe, be it individuallyor in a community setting.
The advent of the “personal computer”, enabling global reach and instant interaction has
escalated the demand for more and more information and the ability to respond toitinstantly.
It isthus that the broadcastersand content providersset out to seek new meansofdelivering
higher levels of content, be it in volume or quality using existing ornew transpor tmechanisms
available.
Digitalisation, taken from the world of information technology was the obvious choice. It
further brought the added benefitsof efficient use of spectrum and energy. Terrestrial
television hasto migrate from analogue to digital in order to survive in the new information
society.
Governments are keen to switch off the inefficient analogue broadcastsfor anumber of
obvious reasons, but only will be able to doso when consumersare confident that the new
proposition is attractive and affordable.
Due to the multitude ofcommunities, sometimes single operators, often on a country by
country basis dealing withthe parameters and standards options of launching Digital
Terrestrial services based on DVB, there is a natural tendency to create a variety of
incompatible platforms tied to particularTV operators, and this inturn does not allow for
economy ofscale for all parties concerned, be itcontent providers, broadcasters, network
providers or equipment manufacturers.
In 2000, after over two years of requirementcapture inDigiTAG (Digital Television Action
Group) EACEM (European Association of Consumer Electronic s Manufacturers), which has
evolved into EICTA (European Information, Communications and Consumer Electronics
Technology Industry Associations), decided to address this situation by developing a basic
specification as a minimum platform, providing secure reception ofbroadcast content and
associated services. This resulted in the first revision ofthis standard. It has been used as a
basis in many countries to deploy Digital Terrestrial TV (DTT) with great success.
In 2007, with a new wave of High Definition servicesbeing considered to be launched due to
theavailabilityof MPEG4 components, EICTA and the French “Forum HD” decided to
collaborate to create an update for High Definition, and make some minor adjustments that
were due after 7 years of practice with Standard Definition terrestrial TV in the market.The
new standard improvements are taking into account contributions and comments from a.o. UK
DTG (draft HDD-Book), Nordig and DGTVi. This standard does not yet address new
generations of channel coding (DVB-T2) now being consideredby DVB. Extensions of this
standard in this domain may be foreseen in the future.
Licensed copy: University of Auckland Library, University of Auckland Library, Version correct as of 15/05/2012 11:34, (c) The British Standards Institution 2012