This article describes three main developments in broadcasting technology – digital networks, receiver storage capacity and the convergence of services and networks – and indicates the routes that may lead to what is generally seen as the future of broadcasting: interactive multimedia delivery.

Hierarchical modulation – a variant of the digital terrestrial television standard, DVB-T – has received relatively little attention to date in the planning processes. It enables the transmission of two independent DVB-T multiplexes on a single TV frequency channel, with different transmission qualities (high priority and low priority). The high-priority multiplex can be used, in particular, for portable indoor and mobile reception.

On the basis of specific examples, this article shows that hierarchical modulation can be a worthwhile alternative to non-hierarchical modulation.

Over the past five years or so, the Finnish public broadcaster YLE has progressively been advancing along the route to full digitalization of its news post production operations. This article describes the stages covered thus far, the problems encountered along the way – and includes the observations of a YLE journalist who has closely monitored the progress.

The auctions of UMTS spectrum in Europe have raised worldwide awareness of the potential value of this natural resource which, over the past decades, has been virtually free to use. Many broadcasters now fear the loss of their spectrum to more valuable telecom applications.

In this article we derive expressions for the value of both telecommunications and broadcast spectrum. An investigation of the capacity of the ether leads to the conclusion that, in the rare case of spectrum shortage, it is more reasonable to take spectrum from telecoms and give it to broadcasters than the other way around.

Since the EBU P/Meta Project began in 1999, a number of standardized metadata schemes have become available, and there is considerable debate regarding their relative merits and appropriateness for different purposes. As well as P/Meta’s output – EBU Tech doc 3295 (P_META v1.0) – the EBU also offers Tech doc 3293 (Metadata for Radio Archives), based on Dublin Core. However, the different schemes need not be mutually exclusive.

This article – written by the former Chair of P/FRA, Richard Wright from the BBC Information & Archives division – discusses the relationship between these two schemes and the scope for co-existence.