World's first High-Efficiency TV Broadcast Transmission over DVB-T

The new digital coding standard H.264 / AVC allows at least twice the number of programs per TV channel, in comparison to MPEG-2, while keeping the same image quality. Thus, portable TV sets can reach a program variety similar to satellite reception.
 
System Description

Digital transmission will overcome restrictions of analogue terrestrial broadcasting networks because frequencies can be reused in adjacent regions (Single Frequency Networks). Furthermore, more than one programme (currently 4 with MPEG-2 coding) can be transmitted per channel.

The new, most efficient coding standard H.264/AVC additionally improves the utilisation of TV channels by a factor of two up to three over MPEG-2. A TV program coded according to this standard can achieve broadcast quality at about 1 Mbit/s. DVB-T channels bear about 13 Mbit/s (UHF, 8 MHz), thus up to 13 programs can share the same channel. Moreover, H.264/AVC will be the basis of the new DVB-H (H= handheld) transmission standard, which is dedicated for broadcast services to handheld devices.

In our demonstration, H.264/AVC coded video and AAC coded audio are carried by UDP packets as part of an Internet Protocol (IP) service included in the MPEG-2 transport stream. So the transmission network can be used without modification.

The block diagram shows the experimental system, which has been developed for the IFA demonstration. H.264 / AVC content has been coded offline and stored on a media server. An IP-Inserter merges the data into an MPEG-2 transport stream which is modulated and transmitted over the DVB-T network. On the receiver side we use a commercial set-top box with USB interface to receive the IP data which is decoded in real-time by a PC and finally displayed on a consumer TV set.

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