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The first major round of switch-over from the first generation of DVB Terrestrial broadcasting to DVB-T2 and HEVC compression took place in the night of March 28 to 29. Most of the viewers switched to DVB-T2 and HEVC/H.265 that night, or had to choose a different Television Platform, like cable or satellite. The transition ends mid 2019, with the commercial broqdcasters switch complete by November of this year and the remainder of the time required for switching over the last few public broadcasters locations, public broadcasters tend to offer wider coverage.
The terrestrial platform is build and operated by Media Broadcast formerly the incumbent telco's network and broadcast services provider subsidary. Media Broadcast works for Public broadcasters ARD, and its regional network partners, ZDF, and commercial broadcasting groups RTL, and Pro7Sat.1. The commercial channels are offered as a subscription service called Freenet TV, either as post-paid for €5,75 per month or pre-paid for €69,- for a year. The public broadcasters are available free, without scrambling.
Freenet TV says it has signed up half a million subscribers to date. Eventhough the free period ran till the start of July.
The platform roughly offers twenty unscrambled and twenty scrambled, subscription, channels,with some regional differences. The ARD network offering both Nation-wide and regional channels.
The switchover is in part caused by the Federal Government's directive to reduce the frequency spectrum used by terrestrial broadcasting. DVB-T2 HD is a joint initiative of ARD, the federal state media authorities, Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland, ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE, VPRT and ZDF.
The distribution of ARD channels to the 130 transmitter sites is over ARDs own backbone network, whereas the ZDF signals will be carried over the Media Broadcast network.
Eventhough the network is build by a single party, the various broadcasters have chosen their own HEVC compression and multiplexing equipment. Research Institute, Fraunhofer HHI, famous for inventing MP3, today announced its HEVC compression technology as embedded in Rohde & Schwarz's AVHE100 encoding and multiplexing solution for its headend implementation.
The Rohde & Schwarz system handles the central signal processing as well as encoding and multiplexing for the new DVB-T2 network. It uses the new HEVC codec to deliver what Fraunhofer claims to be 'the best video quality at the lowest possible data rate'. This system solution provides realtime HEVC encoding of resolutions up to 4K/UHD at up to 60 frames per second. Though the service only offers HD. The integrated HEVC encoder was developed by the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute HHI, a major contributor to the HEVC video compression standard.
"The key advantage for this successful application is that, thanks to the integrated Fraunhofer HHI HEVC coder, the R&S AVHE100 offers the best picture quality on the market for HEVC coded content", Fraunhofer said in a statement.
Hessischer Rundfunk, one of the ARD members, on the other hand has deployed French software based compression vendor ATEME’s compression and statistical multiplexing solutions for its DVB-T2 and OTT services. Its brand new HEVC statmux headend uses ATEME TITAN full-software solution for delivering 15 full-HD channels with premium video quality (1080P@50).
“We are pleased to announce having selected ATEME to service our new DVB-T2 converged headend,” said Jörg-Peter Jost, senior engineer at Hessischer Rundfunk. “We decided to deploy the TITAN solution to deliver our premium services with the highest video quality on all kinds of end user devices. The end-to-end solution by ATEME provides us with the full flexibility we need today in terms of hardware abstraction, third party integration and custom service oriented operations under an unified management system (AMS)”.
The terrestrial platform is build and operated by Media Broadcast formerly the incumbent telco's network and broadcast services provider subsidary. Media Broadcast works for Public broadcasters ARD, and its regional network partners, ZDF, and commercial broadcasting groups RTL, and Pro7Sat.1. The commercial channels are offered as a subscription service called Freenet TV, either as post-paid for €5,75 per month or pre-paid for €69,- for a year. The public broadcasters are available free, without scrambling.
Freenet TV says it has signed up half a million subscribers to date. Eventhough the free period ran till the start of July.
The platform roughly offers twenty unscrambled and twenty scrambled, subscription, channels,with some regional differences. The ARD network offering both Nation-wide and regional channels.
The switchover is in part caused by the Federal Government's directive to reduce the frequency spectrum used by terrestrial broadcasting. DVB-T2 HD is a joint initiative of ARD, the federal state media authorities, Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland, ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE, VPRT and ZDF.
The distribution of ARD channels to the 130 transmitter sites is over ARDs own backbone network, whereas the ZDF signals will be carried over the Media Broadcast network.
Eventhough the network is build by a single party, the various broadcasters have chosen their own HEVC compression and multiplexing equipment. Research Institute, Fraunhofer HHI, famous for inventing MP3, today announced its HEVC compression technology as embedded in Rohde & Schwarz's AVHE100 encoding and multiplexing solution for its headend implementation.
The Rohde & Schwarz system handles the central signal processing as well as encoding and multiplexing for the new DVB-T2 network. It uses the new HEVC codec to deliver what Fraunhofer claims to be 'the best video quality at the lowest possible data rate'. This system solution provides realtime HEVC encoding of resolutions up to 4K/UHD at up to 60 frames per second. Though the service only offers HD. The integrated HEVC encoder was developed by the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute HHI, a major contributor to the HEVC video compression standard.
"The key advantage for this successful application is that, thanks to the integrated Fraunhofer HHI HEVC coder, the R&S AVHE100 offers the best picture quality on the market for HEVC coded content", Fraunhofer said in a statement.
Hessischer Rundfunk, one of the ARD members, on the other hand has deployed French software based compression vendor ATEME’s compression and statistical multiplexing solutions for its DVB-T2 and OTT services. Its brand new HEVC statmux headend uses ATEME TITAN full-software solution for delivering 15 full-HD channels with premium video quality (1080P@50).
“We are pleased to announce having selected ATEME to service our new DVB-T2 converged headend,” said Jörg-Peter Jost, senior engineer at Hessischer Rundfunk. “We decided to deploy the TITAN solution to deliver our premium services with the highest video quality on all kinds of end user devices. The end-to-end solution by ATEME provides us with the full flexibility we need today in terms of hardware abstraction, third party integration and custom service oriented operations under an unified management system (AMS)”.