At the RRC-06, a new Agreement and associated frequency plans for digital broadcasting and analogue TV broadcasting during the transition period were agreed (GE06). The next step is implementation of the new Agreement.

Broadcasting organisations, network operators, spectrum user forums and others have announced their opinions on the use of Bands III, IV and V. A term often used in relation to the implementation of the new Agreement is “digital dividend”. This article describes the technical constraints to be taken into account when using released spectrum for several digital dividend applications.

Over the last few years, new wireless applications have been multiplying and appearing quickly on the market. Despite the CE product marking scheme, framed by the EMC and R&TTE Directives, it appears that some of these new devices do not respect the principle of using the spectrum without causing interference to existing on-air services.

This article provides a brief overview of the new and most threatening sources of interference to terrestrial radio and television services.

If correctly applied, DRM can be likened to a motorway, providing a seamless high-speed route to content, enabling people to get the content they want, where they want it, quickly and easily. However, if badly applied, heavy handed and overly restrictive, DRM is more like a traffic jam – denying people access to the content they want and crucially denying rights-holders the revenue they want.

This article looks at some of the proprietary DRM systems currently available and argues that we need to start thinking hard about when and how we apply DRM to our precious content

This article describes the results of laboratory tests carried out by RAI-CRIT in June 2006 on DVB-S2 state-of-the-art equipment. AWGN (Additive White Gaussian Noise) performance, non-linear-channel and phase-noise degradation were measured, and the results show that the equipment is in line with the simulation results reported in the DVB-S2 standard.

Single-carrier and multi-carrier configurations were implemented and compared to the equivalent DVB-S configurations. The results show that DVB-S2 can offer excellent gains over DVB-S – in terms of not only capacity and/or performance, but also flexibility.

Consumers now demand the ability to consume a vast variety of multimedia content (music, video, photos, games, data services etc.) on a range of platforms – while on the move. Such content can be delivered using both broadcast and point-to-point means and, increasingly, the consumers require instant access. Indeed, entertainment on the move is becoming a must-have in today’s mobile world.

A variety of standardized delivery mechanisms are available, using Digital Radio, Mobile TV and mobile-phone technologies – DAB, DRM, DMB and DVB-H as well as the 2.5 and 3G mobile-phone standards. Additionally, our mobile content might include MP2, MP3, MPEG-4 and IP-based audio and video services.

To cope with this plethora of multimedia services, consumed on a variety of mobile devices, an extremely flexible platform is increasingly required. One solution, from RadioScape in the UK, is described in this article.