A joint delegation of DVB and European Union (EU) representatives urged the Philippines to adopt DVB-T2 citing its numerous benefits.
DVB and EU representatives met with the Philippines’ National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to present the technical superiority of DVB-T2 over the dated Japanese ISDB-T system. The economic advantages and the benefits of the economies of scale were also put forth. It is hoped that the NTC will reconsider its deadline of June 30 for its final decision on the adoption of a digital standard.
The delegation called for a proper DVB-T2 field trial to be held so that a full comparison can be made of the competing standards. “It has been proven that under similar conditions, DVB-T2 either provides nearly100% more payload or the transmitter power can be reduced by 8-10 dB, which results in a drastic decrease of capital investment and operational costs for the transmitter network,” said Peter Siebert, Executive Director at DVB.
Owing to the significant success of DVB-T2, low cost STBs are already available for as little as 45 USD in UK retail stores. In addition, there are commercially available low cost DVB-T2 HD set-top boxes operating in 6 MHz channels, as required in the Philippines, the executive added.
DVB-T2 is the world’s most advanced DTT system offering higher efficiency, robustness and flexibility than first generation DTT systems such as DVB-T and ISDB-T. DVB-T2 supports the main frequency bandwidths of 6, 7 and 8 MHz, covering all possible broadcasting scenarios around the world, including 6 MHz countries such as the Philippines.
The total number of countries that have declared their intention to deploy the state-of-the-art second-generation digital terrestrial television (DTT) transmission system now stands at a remarkable 28. In the Asian region, India, Singapore and Sri Lanka have chosen DVB-T2 and tests have been carried out in Malaysia and Thailand.