DVB-T2 is the future

cp2cp2 Posts: 944
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DVB-T2 is much more space efficient and ideally all channels should be broadcast to this standard in order to offer the opportunity for more channels or more bandwidth for existing channels.
However, the number of STBs and TVs in use that would become potentially obsolete is intimidating.
I believe that legislation should be introduced now making it a requirement that from 2013 all TVs or STBs sold with a digital tuner are capable of decoding DVB-T2 transmissions.
This does not mean that they need to be HD capable, just able to decode SD transmissions to DVB-T2 standard.
Making this decision now gives notice to the industry and would mean that from this date the number of potentially obsolete STBs and TVs would diminish, making a full changeover in 2015/6 to DVB-T2 much more of a viable option
A voluntary code or the attraction of HD programmes in unlikely to make sufficient impact.
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Comments

  • carguy143carguy143 Posts: 2,327
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    I agree. I took the HD plunge with a Humax HDR-FOX T2 and think T2 is the way forward. I know some countries have at least 12 HD channels now!

    Italy uses DVB-T and DVB-T2 for it's HD channels so surely it won't be that hard for manufacturers release those boxes over here. It shouldn't attract too much of a price premium either as at least we're not the only ones using the T2 standard.

    For those who say Freeview HD/ T2 boxes are expensive, have a google. More and more Freeview HD boxes are falling to the £50 mark. eg http://www.comet.co.uk/p/Freeview-freesat-Boxes/buy-GOODMANS-GDB300HD-Freeview-freesat-Boxe/611670
  • SteveMcKSteveMcK Posts: 5,457
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    cp2 wrote: »
    A voluntary code or the attraction of HD programmes in unlikely to make sufficient impact.
    So if people don't want to buy HD equipment, they should be required to do so by law?! Do you work for a DVB-T2 manufacturer? :D
  • cdon77cdon77 Posts: 464
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    The same argument was made regarding selling TV's with analogue tuners, they only stoped selling them last year and that was not due to legislation.

    The same thing will happen with DVB-T2, the cost will reduce significantly shortly as India (pop. 1.1b) and Southern and central Africa (pop 3-400,000) have both adopted DVB-T2 as their DTT standard. DVB-T2 will become the default chips simply because they will be cheap enough, a huge market will exit for them and crucially they are already compatible with DVB-T.

    DVB-T will continue for the 5 main channels until at least 2022.
  • lbearlbear Posts: 1,773
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    SteveMcK wrote: »
    So if people don't want to buy HD equipment, they should be required to do so by law?! Do you work for a DVB-T2 manufacturer? :D

    Same old argument used by people who had purchased Logie Baird's mechanical television, those who objected to having to buy a new box so they could get "commercial television", those who mourned the switch off of VHF 405 line transmissions and most recently those who complain about being forced to change because analogue is being turned off.

    We should of course have waited to introduce digital television until the DVB-T2 and H.264 standards had been devised and made imports of DVB-T tuners illegal, like Kenya.

    Or should we wait until the final specifications for the new DVB-TNG standard - or the Tolkein standard as I call it - has been finalised. After all, it will enable all devices from small phones to giant screens to use the system intended to "unite them all".
  • linkinpark875linkinpark875 Posts: 29,686
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    It will take years for SD boxes to be ditched.

    Another DVB-T2 mux is possible but in the meantime those boxes are good for second rooms.

    Switch over is still ongoing so it would be far too costly to ask everybody to buy another box.
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 395
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    It will take years for SD boxes to be ditched.

    Another DVB-T2 mux is possible but in the meantime those boxes are good for second rooms.

    Switch over is still ongoing so it would be far too costly to ask everybody to buy another box.

    Yes, it will be YEARS.. Mind you.. Anyone seen with a phone more than 2 years old these days might be considered as insane by some!

    All technology is going this way and people may be embarrased to admit they only have DVB-T. :) Oh God! My TV is over two years old... :eek:
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 24
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    Could the upgrade to t2 not be done with a software update to the boxes?

    And as for old boxes - i still have my on-digital one and it works fine (well maybe a bit slow)
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 395
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    Could the upgrade to t2 not be done with a software update to the boxes?

    And as for old boxes - i still have my on-digital one and it works fine (well maybe a bit slow)

    Nope, hardware is incompatible...

    All OnDigital boxes will stop working (well, most I believe) after DSO (2012) but will make a good door-stop or perhaps hardcore . . :)
  • lbearlbear Posts: 1,773
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    It will take years for SD boxes to be ditched.

    Another DVB-T2 mux is possible but in the meantime those boxes are good for second rooms.

    Switch over is still ongoing so it would be far too costly to ask everybody to buy another box.

    It is actually a very good time to point out to people the consequences of buying a DVB-T tuner in terms of possible future developments.

    My betting is that by 2025 the last DVB-T mux will be turned off. It will carry the "analogue 5" and radio channels for the benefit of "legacy owners". Gradual conversion will start with a second DVB-T2 mux in 2013, probably in the 600MHz band or the "interleaved" frequencies released by DSO. Then the existing muxes will go and will, of course, carry SD as well as HD services.

    The 2012 New Year sales will see retailers clearing the last of their non DVB-T2 tuner enabled sets larger than 32ins (with the possible exception of really cheap own branded ones)

    Remember T2 boxes now start at £50 so the tuners must be considerably less than that. With the number of countries, including India, adopting the standard prices will continue to fall. Very soon buying an "upscaling" DVB-T box or one with an HDMI socket will be a nonsense as an HD box will be as cheap or cheaper.

    I suggest a Christmas at home trying to tune the "full HD" set to get BBC1 HD to watch Eastenders or Dr Who will get the message out about the need for a T2 box out.
  • figrin_danfigrin_dan Posts: 1,437
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    cp2 wrote: »
    This does not mean that they need to be HD capable, just able to decode SD transmissions to DVB-T2 standard.
    An SD only DVB-T2 box is going to cost more than an HD box due to, amongst other things, the fact that they wont sell many.
    lbear wrote: »
    My betting is that by 2025 the last DVB-T mux will be turned off. It will carry the "analogue 5" and radio channels for the benefit of "legacy owners". Gradual conversion will start with a second DVB-T2 mux in 2013, probably in the 600MHz band or the "interleaved" frequencies released by DSO. Then the existing muxes will go and will, of course, carry SD as well as HD services.
    It's a nice idea but I'll take that bet! I don't see that anyone will pay for it (IMO)
  • Secret-SquirrelSecret-Squirrel Posts: 1,051
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    ..and there was me thinking that 'Garlic Bread' was the future :D
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 395
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    ..and there was me thinking that 'Garlic Bread' was the future :D

    I think you're right!

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8569082.stm
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 1,615
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    figrin_dan wrote: »
    An SD only DVB-T2 box is going to cost more than an HD box due to, amongst other things, the fact that they wont sell many.

    It's a nice idea but I'll take that bet! I don't see that anyone will pay for it (IMO)

    Just put a standard output on it then. HD stuff can only work over HDMI/HDCP* but an SD picture can still be output over SCART

    *I know Component would work, but given the paranoia over HD content needing protection ;)
  • lbearlbear Posts: 1,773
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    figrin_dan wrote: »
    An SD only DVB-T2 box is going to cost more than an HD box due to, amongst other things, the fact that they wont sell many.

    But you miss the point that all the HD boxes are compatible with SCART enabled SD sets. With the wide adoption of DVB-T2, manufacturers will be making sets with those tuners for the entire European and other markets. It will be like the current situation with sets on the UK market that can receive DVB-T HD as transmitted in other EU countries, even if in some instances the software is disabled.

    Indeed after DSO very few new DVB-T boxes will be sold or available in the UK. What would be the point:? By 2013 everybody who wants to continue to use a legacy set would have had to purchase a Freeview box. With fewer markets in the rest of the world, DVB-T boxes will become more expensive to manufacture than T2 boxes for exactly the reason you put forward against DVB-T2 SD boxes.

    It's a nice idea but I'll take that bet! I don't see that anyone will pay for it (IMO)

    How much exactly would that cost? What is the difference between a transmitter broadcasting DVB-T/Mpeg2 and DVB-T2/H264? Most extra cost surely would be in the encoding equipment used before networking of the mux signals. As these presumably are replaced at least as often as the average domestic TV, a target date of 2025 is entirely feasible.

    You seem to be under the impression that there would be high costs because of studio changes to HD. That was not in the equation as the proposal is for SD and HD to be broadcast using the standard.

    There would be huge advantages in this for those in "Freeview lite" areas as conversion to T2 would enable them to get the same number of channels as provided on the SD muxes in fully served areas today. In fact, if there were no further channels launched, the existing FTA HD UK channels on satellite could be broadcast terrestrially on 3 muxes and the bandwidth used for their existing SD broadcasts released.

    That might even mean fewer muxes are needed for the services broadcasters are willing to support with savings rather than costs involved for them as a result of DVB-T switchoff.

    Even in terms of domestic sets, not many people retain one for over 15 years and for most of this year it has been virtually impossible to buy a TV with less than the "HD ready" specification. HD boxes now go from £50 - considerably less in cash terms than Freeview boxes did less than 10 months after the very first appeared. With the increased economies of scale from the number of countries adopting T2, prices comparable to current basic Freeview boxes in real terms within a couple of years are not unfeasible.
  • figrin_danfigrin_dan Posts: 1,437
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    lbear wrote: »
    But you miss the point that all the HD boxes are compatible with SCART enabled SD sets.
    That was part of my point, and this is the other part:
    HD boxes now go from £50
    As for the other part of your post; it would be great to see loads of decent quality channels appearing on my freeview. But they don't seem economically viable to me.
  • noise747noise747 Posts: 30,697
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    i am really getting fed up of being told what to buy and then when I buy it I find that after a couple of years it is out of date. Not because it don't do what it is suppose to do, but because some one wants to make more money out of us mugs.

    Turn analogue T.v off, get us mugs to pay out money for digital, ok I know analogue have been around for a while, but it works and do better job than digital crap. when we do go digital, some of finds out that the box we was told was future proof was not flipping future proof and now will not work..

    Then we buy a nice new expensive T.v that will work with this crap digital system and then we are told again that HD is the future and we must update again.


    i know things change, but i analogue T.V, records, tapes and analogue radio was with us for years, now all of a sudden we are expected to fork out money every couple of years.

    Nothing wrong with analogue T.V or radio and yet some greedy sods want money so we must pay out for new stuff and nothing is said or done, people just do it, because they are like bloody sheep

    like people who thinks they need a new computer or a new car every year, what is the flipping point?
  • lbearlbear Posts: 1,773
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    noise747 wrote: »
    Nothing wrong with analogue T.V or radio and yet some greedy sods want money so we must pay out for new stuff and nothing is said or done, people just do it, because they are like bloody sheep

    like people who thinks they need a new computer or a new car every year, what is the flipping point?

    Agreed, there was very little wrong with a good image received on a well set up PAL set provided that you had a strong signal with no multipath interference.

    Actually a great many people did not have that, far from it. They had the chrominance turned up so high with poor quality signals so everybody looked like Dale Winton in a snowstorm and most could not tell correct colour balance if it bit them. . And low power multipaths were positively welcomed because it caused an edge effect giving a false impression of sharpness.

    On radio, most people were listening to analogue transistor sets with 1inch speakers and terrible electronics.

    It would have been very easy for Freeview to limit the number of TV channels on a mux to three or four to provide the bandwidth for top quality digital signals with huge redundancy. In an age when Murdoch had introduced multi-channel satellite services and, indeed even analogue cable services were able to offer more than five, that route would have really been a dead end.

    The real service was to radio which has seen a vast increase in listenership, prompted by its availability via TV with their inherently better sound systems (compared to tranny radios) and the real advantage of considerably less interference and drifting off station.

    Yes there are problems with current SD DVB-T pictures, notably the amount of digital artifacts that crop up. That is precisely the reason for wanting to go to DVB-T2 with H264 even for SD pictures. Those artifacts disappear. However, like the problems with the old PAL CRTs. these only become apparent significantly when you start to look for them. The vast majority of people see an improvement with digital SD because the previous faults like snow and multiple images have been sorted out.

    The change to HD means people are actually seeing detail they previously PERCEIVED to be there. To use my favorite example. In coverage of Wimbledon tennis, in the long whole court shots, most people will tell you there is a net between the two ends. If you actually look at the SD picture, you will see the system cannot resolve it and there is actually only a darker band across the screen. In HD, you can see the strands making up the net.

    For most of the last decade, nobody was forced to purchase a Freeview box or IDTV. Most did so in order to get more channels and that facilitated analogue turn-off. In the same way, for several years most people will get a DVB-T2 receiver in order to enable equipment they already have to give improved service by delivering HD pictures and, increasingly IPTV services. However the big difference will be that, with the difference in cost for manufacturers of installing a T2 rather than a T tuner falling to £10 or £20, the number of standard definition only sets on the market will similarly fall very soon.
  • noise747noise747 Posts: 30,697
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    lbear wrote: »
    Agreed, there was very little wrong with a good image received on a well set up PAL set provided that you had a strong signal with no multipath interference.


    Which most people with a decent enough aerial can get. Even around here where the analogue signal is not that strong I can get a decent signal with a cheap roof top aerial and it was fine when I had a aerial in the loft.

    Had to get a new aerial because I went for Ondigital.

    Actually a great many people did not have that, far from it. They had the chrominance turned up so high with poor quality signals so everybody looked like Dale Winton in a snowstorm and most could not tell correct colour balance if it bit them. . And low power multipaths were positively welcomed because it caused an edge effect giving a false impression of sharpness.


    Most peoples looked ok to me, the big problems was when we started to go widescreen and because analogue don't support widescreen people had it all set up wrong.

    I sorted my parents out when they went widescreen, I took a while before I bothered to go widescreen, even when I had On digital I did not bother.

    On radio, most people were listening to analogue transistor sets with 1inch speakers and terrible electronics.

    That was a few years back, i remember when I was a child about 37 years back or so we had a large valve radio in the kitchen, the aerial was a clothes line. we had it for years.

    i myself only had a transistor radio when i was a child and to me that was great.

    i was going to say it been a while since people listened to radio or any music on on 1 inch speakers, but that is not true, as the youth listen to what they call music on the tiny speakers their mobile phone uses.
    It would have been very easy for Freeview to limit the number of TV channels on a mux to three or four to provide the bandwidth for top quality digital signals with huge redundancy. In an age when Murdoch had introduced multi-channel satellite services and, indeed even analogue cable services were able to offer more than five, that route would have really been a dead end.

    You want multi channel, you pay, simple as that really. But saying that, there was and still is no need for all the rubbish that is on the DTTV platform.

    You can still have a few channels with good quality picture, just get rid of rubbish and use the space.

    It is all about money and how much can be made, no one gives a crap about quality these days.

    The real service was to radio which has seen a vast increase in listenership, prompted by its availability via TV with their inherently better sound systems (compared to tranny radios) and the real advantage of considerably less interference and drifting off station.


    I think the internet have made the difference with radio listening, the fact that people can now listen to stuff they have missed and also able to listen to stations from all over the world.

    How many people listen to radio on the T.V, with it burning up 200watts of power?

    I did use my Ondigital box to listen to some stations, but I did have it plugged into my hi-fi

    But digital radio is rubbish, the sound quality is awful and it don't matter if it comes via Dab, Dsat, freeview or the internet. Fm is still far better than any digital radio in this country.
    True digital is better than AM stations, just about.

    Yes there are problems with current SD DVB-T pictures, notably the amount of digital artifacts that crop up. That is precisely the reason for wanting to go to DVB-T2 with H264 even for SD pictures. Those artifacts disappear. However, like the problems with the old PAL CRTs. these only become apparent significantly when you start to look for them. The vast majority of people see an improvement with digital SD because the previous faults like snow and multiple images have been sorted out.


    so because we was too quick and too greedy to get a system in place, we now got to get another system to replace the old system, which is to be honest not that old at all.

    CRT and analogue lasted for years and yet the latest system can't even last for a few years. If it was not for the fact that I had the plasma as a gift I would still be using my old CRT. when my plasma bites the dust I may go back to my CRT.

    Just a shame we can't go back to analogue T.v, because some greedy sods likes taking us for mugs

    The change to HD means people are actually seeing detail they previously PERCEIVED to be there. To use my favorite example. In coverage of Wimbledon tennis, in the long whole court shots, most people will tell you there is a net between the two ends. If you actually look at the SD picture, you will see the system cannot resolve it and there is actually only a darker band across the screen. In HD, you can see the strands making up the net.

    i could see the strands on my CRT set with a analogue picture, just shows had bad digital is.
    Do you think people really notice the difference? i don't think a lot of people do, when they get into watching something they just don't notice these things.

    I have watched stuff on bluray and while I do notice the difference to start with I get so involved with the film that I tend not to notice if someone got a spot on his chin or that the cat whiskers is more clear.
    The only time I do take real notice is on wildlife stuff or documentaries about the earth.

    For most of the last decade, nobody was forced to purchase a Freeview box or IDTV. Most did so in order to get more channels and that facilitated analogue turn-off. In the same way,

    Once Ondigital died, everything changed, it was more or less you get digital or you loose TV, so don't tell me no one was forced, people was worried that they would lose their coronation street or East enders. it was all scare tactics from the start. they are now trying that with digital radio, but this time it is not working, because people don't listen to radio as much as they watch T.V
    for several years most people will get a DVB-T2 receiver in order to enable equipment they already have to give improved service by delivering HD pictures and, increasingly IPTV services. However the big difference will be that, with the difference in cost for manufacturers of installing a T2 rather than a T tuner falling to £10 or £20, the number of standard definition only sets on the market will similarly fall very soon.

    Once again, lets see how we can make more money from the suckers in this country, lets downgrade the picture quality of digital TV, so it is worse than their analogue, then when people have paid a few hundred quid we will change it all again, so they have to get a new T.V or box that will cost another few hundred quid and tell them it is better quality.,

    what saddens me is that people falls for it, no wonder so many people get stung on the internet, I can really understand why.

    don't forget that you will be able to connect your T.v on the internet where someone else can start ,making money and stick loads of crap on you t.V that have been seen 20 years ago, with the added advantage that we can get you to press buttons and and spend more money on worthless crap.

    Oh people already do that, that is why these channels that promise you loads of money if you answer the right question and charge premium phone rates spring up and why people are stupid enough to phone up some bloke on a T.v screen who thinks he can see into the future.

    then you get the fools who phone up ITV to vote on some song that a nobody is singing, just to make a few people rich.

    N0 wonder this country is going flipping downhill.

    That is what t.v is going to be like in the future, certainly now that we can have product placement.

    Someone using fairy liquid in coronation street and up on the screen will come press red to see more info about Fairy liquid and to get money off vouchers.

    I don't think I want to see the future of T.v, I have no idea why I bothered to get a t.v licence again, I should have stayed as I was and not bother with the crap.
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 1,332
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    Digital TV has many technical and practical benefits compared to Analogue. Being a qualified broadcast engineer I can say with great confidence that PAL is definitely inferior to MPEG encoded digital video. However, this is only true where the quality of encoding is maintained through the chain. I most cases on Freeview the demand for space as meant that the price of a broadcast 'slot' has been driven up (basic economics of supply and demand). Thus companies want to leverage that by reducing their costs and thus quality is reduced. I have seen component SD pictures which are indistinguishable from HD to the untrained eye, but I have rarely seen PAL distinguish itself. The PAL analogue system is a relic of history and, like 24fps cinema, should stay in history as far as general use is concerned.

    Technology costs less over time, eventually Freeview HD will cost the same as Freeview SD and even less as things progress. The manufacturing cost of MPEG4 SD are almost the same as MPEG4 HD at the moment, T2 costs a great deal more than T but that is because not enough volume has been sold yet to drive the price down substantially. South Africa has chosen T2 and many other countries are considering it. Once a country, such as India, selects T2 then the price will fall dramatically because of the growth in demand. It is possible for a country like India to pick T2 for their basic service because just the promise of one billion people potentially buying T2 is enough to justify a dramatic shift in price to a degree that it becomes affordable to the majority of the TV viewing population.

    HD will become affordable with time, historically the UK has not legislated to drive the market, in France they did legislate for HD but I am not sure it has helped them. It is sometimes better to encourage market forces to move in the right direction and to let the industry innovate to the most practical solution.

    noise747, I lived without a TV for years and I was quite happy. I have one now, mostly because of work. Clearly it doesn't interest you enough and you should seriously consider getting rid of it.
  • PhilipLPhilipL Posts: 1,118
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    Hi
    lbear wrote: »
    Yes there are problems with current SD DVB-T pictures, notably the amount of digital artifacts that crop up. That is precisely the reason for wanting to go to DVB-T2 with H264 even for SD pictures. Those artifacts disappear. However, like the problems with the old PAL CRTs. these only become apparent significantly when you start to look for them. The vast majority of people see an improvement with digital SD because the previous faults like snow and multiple images have been sorted out.

    Yes H264 is better, but all these improved codecs do is allow the broadcasters to reduce the bit-rate further, rather than keep the bit-rate similar and increase the quality.

    H264 is only considered around twice as efficient as MPEG2, which means with bit-rates averaging around 3.5Mbits/sec now for the top SD channels using MPEG2, they will drop the bit-rates down to around 1Mbits/sec or even less when they move to H264. Yes H264 will do a better job of hiding artefacts at these low data-rates, but it basically means any movement just becomes more of a blurry soft focused mess rather than a blocky one as it does now.

    The driving force behind DVB-T2 will be the further reduction in the air-space that TV occupies in order to auction off more freed up space, which is all Freeview with MPEG2 has been about.

    This is already happening with HD on Freeview, which just doesn't feel like HD any more, it has no wow factor now. For a start it isn't full HD, and bit-rates have gone from 16Mbits/sec down to 10Mbits/sec and the latest rates on BBC HD with the introduction BBC One HD is now seeing each channel getting around 6.5Mbits/sec, this is similar to the data rate we used to get on Freeview SD on BBC1!

    I know encoders improve over time, but not that much to allow a drop from 16 to 6.5Mbits/sec without a reduction in picture quality, for that sort of improvement you need a new codec!

    I think the BBC have a cheek calling it HD, and I can understand why people might be disappointed with it.

    Regards

    Phil
  • reslfjreslfj Posts: 1,832
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    Bob_Cat wrote: »
    Once a country, such as India, selects T2 then the price will fall dramatically because of the growth in demand. It is possible for a country like India to pick T2 for their basic service because just the promise of one billion people potentially buying T2 is enough to justify a dramatic shift in price to a degree that it becomes affordable to the majority of the TV viewing population.

    India has selected DVB-T2
    DVB.ORG wrote:
    DVB-T2 Tender in India
    Prasar Bharati, the Broadcasting Corporation of India, plans to introduce DVB-T2 services at 19 Locations in India and has published a formal tender notice. There are plans for DVB-T2 HD and SD services at 19 locations, and the cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata will also have one HD-only service. The tender notices, which have just closed, can be found below and explicitly state that:

    "The transmission facility will conform to DVB-T2 standards as per ETSI standards EN 302755 and TR 102831. The system shall be designed and implemented as described in DVB organizations' Documents A122 and A133." Document A133 covers the Implementation Guidelines for DVB-T2.

    This tender notice and the growing interest for DVB-T2 in the region reconfirm India's 1999 decision to adopt DVB-T as its national Digital Terrestrial Television system, and could potentially create even bigger economies of scale for low DVB-T and DVB-T2 set-top box prices.

    India DVB-T2 Tender Notice (general)

    India DVB-T2 HDTV Tender Notice (4 cities)

    India DVB-T2 SDTV/HDTV Tender Notice (19 cities)


    Item added: 31st August 2010

    But DVB-T2 /MPEG-4 STB's are not much more expensive than DVB-T/MPEG-4 STB's.

    The purchase price of a receiver is the least important cost - long term the cost of 'bit-rate' is far more important and here the cost of DVB-T2 bit-rate is only 60% of the equivalent DVB-T cost.

    In the UK - thanks to Ofcom - the shift to MPEG-4 and to DVB-T2 was combined for great savings to the Freeview viewers.

    Lars :)
  • lbearlbear Posts: 1,773
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    reslfj wrote: »
    India has selected DVB-T2

    As has the Southern African Development Community (Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe).. Kenya has not only selected DVB-T2 as its standard, it has banned importation of DVB-T only equipment.
  • noise747noise747 Posts: 30,697
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    Bob_Cat wrote: »
    Digital TV has many technical and practical benefits compared to Analogue. Being a qualified broadcast engineer I can say with great confidence that PAL is definitely inferior to MPEG encoded digital video. However, this is only true where the quality of encoding is maintained through the chain.

    And that is the problem,
    I most cases on Freeview the demand for space as meant that the price of a broadcast 'slot' has been driven up (basic economics of supply and demand). Thus companies want to leverage that by reducing their costs and thus quality is reduced
    .

    it is all about how much can we push into a small space and still charge high prices for it, not to us, but to broadcasters.
    Take some of the rubbish off the air and use the space for better quality.
    I have seen component SD pictures which are indistinguishable from HD to the untrained eye,

    no doubt they are not compressed to hell, which is the problem we have with digital T.V, and no doubt Hd is also compressed to hell.
    but I have rarely seen PAL distinguish itself. The PAL analogue system is a relic of history and, like 24fps cinema, should stay in history as far as general use is concerned.

    But it works and is certainly better than the trash that is replacing it.

    Technology costs less over time, eventually Freeview HD will cost the same as Freeview SD and even less as things progress. The manufacturing cost of MPEG4 SD are almost the same as MPEG4 HD at the moment, T2 costs a great deal more than T but that is because not enough volume has been sold yet to drive the price down substantially. South Africa has chosen T2 and many other countries are considering it. Once a country, such as India, selects T2 then the price will fall dramatically because of the growth in demand. It is possible for a country like India to pick T2 for their basic service because just the promise of one billion people potentially buying T2 is enough to justify a dramatic shift in price to a degree that it becomes affordable to the majority of the TV viewing population.

    HD will become affordable with time, historically the UK has not legislated to drive the market, in France they did legislate for HD but I am not sure it has helped them. It is sometimes better to encourage market forces to move in the right direction and to let the industry innovate to the most practical solution.


    All well and good apart from one problem, i doubt many of the channels that are on Freeview now will broadband castr in Hd and unless Freeview have more muxes then something will have to go, unless they compressed Hd so much that it looks like Sd.

    it is all a con you know, as i said above, the give us a crap picture with digital T.v and then try to get us to buy more equipment to give us something that we should have had in the first place.

    No doubt the government will get the money from the sale of the frequencies.
    Public screwed over again and again buy our government and yet people just don't notice or are too stupid to realise
    noise747, I lived without a TV for years and I was quite happy. I have one now, mostly because of work. Clearly it doesn't interest you enough and you should seriously consider getting rid of it.
    been there, done that for nearly 2 years, to be honest I wish i stayed that way, the only problem is that you are treated like a criminal as if it is a offence not to have a T.v and get checked up on all the time by the little Hitlers at the TVL
  • kevkev Posts: 21,071
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    lbear wrote: »
    I suggest a Christmas at home trying to tune the "full HD" set to get BBC1 HD to watch Eastenders or Dr Who will get the message out about the need for a T2 box out.

    Plug In, Turn on, Let it tune, 50 - works?

    Not that I can see the advantage on BBC ONE HD - however ITV-1 HD is noticeably sharper than Granada.

    That being said, still wanting to get a Freeview HD recorder when Waltham goes through DSO in August, partially for the media streaming and file transfer capabilities, but also for the F1 (assuming it does go HD).
  • lbearlbear Posts: 1,773
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    kev wrote: »
    Plug In, Turn on, Let it tune, 50 - works?

    Not that I can see the advantage on BBC ONE HD - however ITV-1 HD is noticeably sharper than Granada.

    That being said, still wanting to get a Freeview HD recorder when Waltham goes through DSO in August, partially for the media streaming and file transfer capabilities, but also for the F1 (assuming it does go HD).

    You miss my point but also exactly illustrate it.

    "HD Ready" and "Full HD" does not mean that the set has a DVB-T2 tuner. This has been lost on large numbers of the public - despite all the complaints in the Daily Mail in the Spring about the need/cost of buying a box (all of which have been repeated in this thread) Many still think they are watching an HD picture because the set has the sticker in the corner.
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