For more than ten years, EBU Members have been developing and refining their web sites in order to enhance and augment their core radio and television broadcasting activities. The web is no longer merely an information medium (providing textual and pictorial information) but has become an audiovisual content-distribution medium for the internet-connected PC user – for both linear (scheduled) programmes (“channels”) as well as for non-linear (“on-demand”) programmes.

The BBC’s development of the iPlayer is undoubtedly one of the best examples of how broadcasters can exploit the internet as a new media delivery mechanism. It can thus serve as a blueprint for other broadcasters to develop their broadcast services on the internet.

This article is based on a series of phone-calls in August 2008 between Franc Kozamernik (EBU Technical) and Anthony Rose, BBC Controller Vision & Online Media Group, which includes the iPlayer.

Emerging Broadcasting to Handhelds (BTH) technologies could be used to convey much more than the usual audio or video programming. For a long time now, broadcasters have imagined and standardized many new multimedia and data applications which, deplorably, did not succeed in the market.

In the first part of this article, we suggest that the open source handhelds which have become prominent as a consequence of recent technological trends, could also bring the emergence of broadcaster-led applications on mobile devices. In the second part, we will introduce the Openmokast project and describe how the CRC was able to produce, with very limited resources, the first open mobile-phone prototype, capable of receiving and presenting live broadcasting services.

Although there is widespread interest in mobile television, there are growing concerns over business model issues (infrastructure costs and revenue sharing). Many DVB-H launches are being delayed because of lack of agreements – between mobile network operators and broadcasters – on the best business model to use. Consequently, some MNOs have decided to launch mobile phones that take advantage of free-to-air DVB-T reception, such as in Germany, thus questioning the viability of DVB-H pay-TV services.

This article compares DVB-T and DVB-H coverage performance for several classes of receivers. It concludes that DVB-T will not kill DVB-H! Some countries will start with DVB-T and add DVB-H later, while others will do the opposite. In the end, DVB-T and DVB-H will co-exist.

One of the most interesting, complicated, intriguing and political questions for the upcoming years in Europe will be the question of how to handle the spectrum in the UHF band (470 - 862 MHz). Up to now, this has been the frequency space used for analogue television but with the approaching analogue switch-off, this will change.

In Sweden, the last analogue transmitter was shut down a year ago and the process for a new spectrum allocation is up and running at full speed. This article takes a closer look at the situation in Sweden.