DVB-HTML — an optional declarative language within MHP 1.1
Philippe Perrot (293 KB)

Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) is preparing itself to meet the new challenges of the digital era. The Internet, DVB, UMTS and DAB are all competing to provide flexible data services to millions of new users.

Through the use of Java language APIs, the DAB system is now able to offer flexible and dynamic solutions for delivering exciting new content to mobile users.

This article summarizes the potential offered by Java technology in the radio broadcasting environment, and concludes with a description of the Java DAB API framework, and the software architecture of the Java DAB platform.

This article introduces a model to describe the way in which a single echo gives rise to an equivalent noise floor (ENF) in a DVB-T system. Once the ENF is known, it is possible to calculate the equivalent noise degradation (END) of the system. The article also shows that the model can readily be extended to include multiple echoes. Agreement between the predictions of the model and practical measurements is shown to be good.

Last year, the Belgian facilities company, Alfacam, placed their faith in HDTV by designing and constructing two state-of-the-art OB vehicles, one of which was recently demonstrated at IBC in Amsterdam. This article offers an overview of the facilities offered by this new HDTV OB vehicle, which is also equipped to provide standard-definition pictures, simultaneously.

Verification of the correct interoperability of MPEG-2/P@ML encoders and decoders (IRDs) – as supplied by various manufacturers – is an important task which is best carried out by independent third parties, such as the EBU.

This article gives the results of back-to-back interoperability tests carried out in the laboratory by the EBU in June 2001, as a follow-up to satellite tests made in May 2000, when several problems were encountered.

The new results are very encouraging, showing that almost perfect interoperability has now been achieved. Moreover, the picture-quality performance of the latest encoders and decoders shows a noticeable improvement compared with first-generation encoders and decoders.