The Geneva 2006 frequency plan (GE06) is set to replace the Stockholm plan of 1961 (ST61) – providing for T-DAB and DVB-T digital services in the VHF and UHF broadcasing bands (Bands III and IV/V) throughout the European Broadcasting Area and beyond. The EBU contributed actively and efficiently to the success of the planning process, by developing the calculation software that was used by the ITU at RRC-06.

This article describes the planning process and its outcome which should ensure that spectrum is available for digital terrestrial broadcasting over the next few decades, covering a large area including 118 countries.

As the world goes digital, archives are moving from their kilometres of shelves to a brave new world where the holdings are invisible, on some sort of IT system. Can this really happen? In the BBC we have 100 km of shelves in our main archive and about 3.5 million physical items (video and audio tapes, reels of film). The holdings are the permanent result of all that the BBC has meant and accomplished – because broadcasting, itself, simply goes out into the ether and disappears.

In the BBC archive we have decades of experience in dealing with this media. But how can we move all this content – this almost sacred legacy – into IT systems and still sleep at night? This article explains how it might be done.

RawFlow is one of several emerging technologies for streaming audio and video content over P2P networks. The Danish public-service broadcaster DR has been using RawFlow for streaming its online radio since 2003 and will shortly start streaming video with this technology. TSR, the Swiss national broadcaster, trialled RawFlow video streaming during the Tour de Suisse cycling race earlier this year and the Estonian public broadcaster, Eesti Radio, is also experimenting with it.

A broad overview of RawFlow is given in this article along with some results from its use by DR over the last three years.

The Prix Europa 2006 opening concert was given on 14 October 2006 in Berlin by a Portuguese World Music group called Gaiteros de Lisboa. On the occasion of this one-hour long concert, the EBU organized a technical experiment to distribute multichannel 5.1 audio – coded in HE AAC (High Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding) over the internet using a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) technology from Octoshape.

This experiment is significant because, for the first time, an event was “broadcast” live in 5.1 multichannel format across the Internet, potentially addressing large audiences with high-quality surround sound.

This article provides some background information on the HDTV format comparisons conducted by EBU Technical Department at the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) in Amsterdam during September 2006. The objective of the demonstration was to provide neutral and educative information for the HDTV format debate.

The demonstration not only showed the two current HDTV formats, 720p/50 and 1080i/25, but also introduced the next-generation HDTV format – 1080p/50. All three formats were presented with identical content and simultaneously on three Full-HD displays, in uncompressed and compressed form. Thus, viewers of the demonstration were able to judge the HDTV image quality for themselves.

Exhibition space at IBC 2006 was at a premium this year, as the organizers tried to squeeze in everyone who wanted to take a booth. Restaurant and bar premises were re-deployed as stand space – that’s how IBC added virtually an extra hall, devoted to the “Mobile Zone” which was a clear example of the growing interest in TV for Mobiles. IBC 2006 had the most booths ever, and the most visitors too – 45,000 was the final count.

Here, Nick Radlo looks back at the the most important and best things that caught his eye.