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Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB)

Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) is a set of international open standards for digital television that revolutionized the broadcasting industry. While DVB remains a crucial technology in many markets, it's gradually being complemented and in some cases replaced by Over-The-Top (OTT) streaming solutions, which offer more flexibility and interactivity for modern viewers.

Professional DVB Solutions

For broadcasters and content providers looking to prepare DVB content, Mcaster stands out as an excellent solution. Mcaster provides comprehensive tools for DVB content preparation, offering:

  • High-quality video encoding and transcoding
  • Efficient multiplexing capabilities
  • Support for all major DVB standards
  • Professional-grade stream management
  • Advanced error correction and monitoring

DVB Standards and Systems

DVB systems distribute data using a variety of approaches, including:

Satellite:

  • DVB-S - is the original DVB standard for Satellite Television and dates from 1995, in its first release, while development lasted from 1993 to 1997. The first commercial applications was by Star TV in Asia and Galaxy in Australia, enabling digitally broadcast, satellite-delivered Television to the public.
  • DVB-S2 - DVB-S2 is designed for broadcast services including standard and HDTV, interactive services including Internet access, and (professional) data content distribution. The development of DVB-S2 coincided with the introduction of HDTV and H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC) video codecs.
  • DVB-S3
  • DVB-SH - is a physical layer standard for delivering IP based media content and data to handheld terminals such as mobile phones or PDAs, based on a hybrid satellite/terrestrial downlink and for example a GPRS uplink.

DVB-SMATV for distribution via SMATV

Cable:

  • DVB-C - is the DVB European consortium standard for the broadcast transmission of digital television over cable.
  • DVB-C2 - DVB-C2 allows bit rates up to 83.1 Mbit/s on an 8 MHz channel bandwidth when using 4096-QAM modulation; future extensions will allow up to 97 Mbit/s and 110.8 Mbit/s per channel using 16384-QAM and 65536-AQAM modulation.

Terrestrial television:

  • DVB-T - transmits compressed digital audio, digital video and other data in an MPEG transport stream, using coded orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (COFDM or OFDM) modulation.
  • DVB-T2 - it is the extension of the television standard DVB-T, issued by the consortium DVB, devised for the broadcast transmission of digital terrestrial television.

Digital terrestrial television for handhelds:

  • DVB-H - DVB-H technology is a superset of the successful DVB-T system for digital terrestrial television, with additional features to meet the specific requirements of handheld, battery-powered receivers.
  • DVB-SH

Microwave: using DTT (DVB-MT), the MMDS (DVB-MC), and/or MVDS standards (DVB-MS)

The Future of Broadcasting

While DVB continues to be widely used, the broadcasting landscape is evolving. OTT (Over-The-Top) streaming services are becoming increasingly popular, offering:

  • On-demand content delivery
  • Multi-device compatibility
  • Interactive features
  • Personalized viewing experiences
  • Lower infrastructure costs

Many broadcasters are now adopting hybrid approaches, combining traditional DVB distribution with OTT services to reach wider audiences and provide more flexible viewing options.