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HD in Europe

by Paul Gray, Director, European TV Research

I was at the DTG Digital TV Summit 2008 on Friday. The DTG is the organization in the UK responsible for pulling together the interest groups in digital broadcasting and then to build standards and agree on best practices. As such, they are responsible for the UK D-Book, which is the UK’s DVB-T standard, and they are also widely consulted by government and policymakers. Their members are the usual suspects of TV set makers, chipmakers, retailers and broadcasters, but also include charities and disability groups. They are also advising other countries such as Ireland and New Zealand on DVB-T launches.

The meeting included reports on progress elsewhere in Europe, too—and HD dominated the discussion. It is clear that the UK and France are going to be the two engines of terrestrial HD in Europe. In France, the strong State approach has made the country a “lucky laggard”—late into digital broadcast, the latest standards like MPEG-4 were used, lessons from others’ mistakes were carefully learned and a final plan is now being implemented. Mandating of MPEG decoders has now started, with HD DVB-T transmissions this year. All sets will also have logos on them to ensure consumers know what they are buying.

Figure 1. HDTV Logo

So France has a coherent plan of HD DVB-T, which is being deployed to high consumer interest and uptake.

The UK has the opposite situation. As the UK was the first country in the world to launch digital terrestrial, there are significant legacy issues. The government has always taken a market-oriented policy, and mandating remains unthinkable. After a false start between 1998 and 2002, digital terrestrial is now the most popular way to watch TV in the UK. Vicious competition between Terrestrial and Satellite (and a recently revitalized Cable) is now driving HD—to the point that over 75% of the households in Europe actually receiving HD are in the UK. But the problem is how to get HD on terrestrial.

The UK terrestrial broadcasters are plugging the gap with a service branded as FreeSat, launching this spring, which will bring four or five free HD channels for the price of a box and dish. But the discussion was about how to get some HD terrestrial in 2009, immediately occupying some of the spectrum freed as switchover rolls across the country until 2012. What became clear is the DVB-T2 is very, very real in the minds of those wanting to transmit, and provides a potential boost to the terrestrial STB industry. DVB-T2 specifications are due out imminently and it will be very interesting to see what they are. Comment was that that the 30% saving from moving to MPEG-4, plus the more efficient coding of T2 (now believed to offer 45% improvement) could create a rush to DVB-T2. It looks likely that the UK will lead the second Digital wave too.

I had thought that DVB-T2 would implemented slowly—now it looks as though there may be immediate demand. It will remain a huge task to implement T2 at the same time as analog switch-off. If it is late, Londoners will still have to take the Eurostar to Paris to watch the London Olympics in Terrestrial HD.

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