DVB Fact Sheet - August 2012

Introduction to the DVB Project

Creating Global Standards for Digital Television

What is the DVB Project?

The Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) Project is an industry-led consortium of more than 200 broadcasters, manufacturers, network operators, software developers, regulatory bodies and others in over 35 countries committed to designing open interoperable standards for the global delivery of digital media and broadcast services. In 1991, broadcasters, equipment manufacturers and regulatory bodies in Europe came together to discuss the formation of a group that would oversee the introduction of digital TV. A consensus-based framework and Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) were drawn up and signed in 1993, setting out the basis on which competitors in the marketplace would come together in a spirit of trust and mutual respect.

Why Join DVB?

Membership of the DVB Project is open to all organisations involved in digital broadcasting and offers involvement in the development of the DVB specifications. The key advantages of being a DVB member are: To contribute to the development of future specifications through proposals and IPRs; To gain early view of specifications in development through DVB meetings, documents, email reflectors; To take advantage of the networking opportunities with other DVB members at meetings and events; To jointly promote DVB standards through workshops, seminars, conferences and trade shows; To indirectly promote DVB products and services, increasing the market awareness of your company; ...and to be part of the most successful organisation of its kind!

How does it work?

The success of the DVB Project is founded on a number of core procedures and principles: 1. 2. 3. 4. The Commercial Module draws up a set of market-based Commercial Requirements for each specification. The Technical Module draws up a technical specification that meets these requirements. The CM reviews the draft specification and sends it to the DVB Steering Board for final approval. It is then sent to ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) for publication as a formal standard.

There are a number of checks and balances in place to ensure that DVB standards remain market driven and are implementable. The MoU signed by all members includes an article devoted to IPR, ensuring that all DVB members license their technology to all implementers on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. This aspect of the Projects work is overseen by the Intellectual Property Rights Module. The Promotions and Communications Module ensures that all interested parties are aware of DVBs activities and successes through close cooperation with the DVB Project Office, based at the European Broadcasting Union headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.
General Assembly Phil Laven

Steering Board

DVB Project Office

Peter Siebert

Commercial Module Graham Mills

Technical Module Nick Wells

Intellectual Property Rights Module Anthony Dixon

Promotions & Communications Module Helmut Stein

Working Groups

Working Groups

The Key Standards

The first phase of DVBs work involved establishing standards to enable the delivery of digital TV to the consumer via the traditional broadcast networks. Thus, the three key standards during this phase were DVB-S for satellite networks, DVB-C for cable networks and DVB-T for terrestrial networks. In addition to these, a whole range of supporting standards were required covering areas such as service information (DVB-SI), subtitling (DVB-SUB), interfacing (e.g. DVB-ASI), etc... Interactive TV, one of the key advances enabled by the switch from analogue to digital, required the creation of a set of return channel standards and the Multimedia Home Platform (MHP), DVBs open middleware specification. DVB then moved to embrace network convergence through the development of standards using innovative technologies that allow the delivery of DVB services over fixed and wireless telecommunications networks (e.g. DVB-H and DVB-SH for mobile TV). Recent years have seen DVB move into areas such as a system for content protection and copy management (DVB-CPCM), and looking at where DVB can make useful contributions to standardisation efforts for IPTV, Internet TV and Home Networks. DVB is dedicated to constant innovation to keep up with both technological developments and market requirements. 2009 saw the completion of the family of second generation delivery standards, with DVB-T2 (terrestrial) and DVB-C2 (cable) joining the already published and deployed DVB-S2 (satellite). Topics that wil be covered in 2011 include the work on 3DTV, IPTV, and the next-generation handheld TV solution.

Market Deployment
Services using DVB standards are available on every continent with around 700 million DVB receivers deployed. DVB-S/S2 forms the basis of digital satellite TV across the globa. DVB-C is the most commonly used system for digital cable TV and DVB-C2 is ready to support this deployment further. DVB-T and DVB-T2 have seen phenomenal growth in the last few years with DVB-T services on air across Europe and in parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America and more than 50 countries that have deployed or committed to DVB-T2. The economies of scale engendered by such success mean that consumer prices for receivers are falling all the time. The high quality of the DVB standards, the family-effect of the shared second generation technologies, and the large deployment base means that the entire broadcast chain can benefit from DVBs affordable, stable and flexible solutions.

The DVB Technical Module with in the middle the new TM Chairman Nick Wells (red tie) and the former TM Chairman Ulrich Reimers (pink tie)

Links
www.dvb.org www.dvbservices.com The main website of the DVB Project Register here to download all the DVB and DVB sub-brand logos.
Produced by the DVB Project Office dvb@dvb.org