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Technical Review | January-March 2013
Bringing Stereo Broadcast Productions into
the Multichannel Realm This workshop, presented by Dolby, explained the importance of providing a high definition digital surround sound experience to the viewers and the opportunities to utilise the multichannel capabilities of latest audio technologies. It focused on the fundamentals of Dolby technologies conveyance of mono through 5.1 channel Surround Sound through content creation, distribution, transmission and presentation in the consumer’s home. The system comprises bitrate reduction codecs and matrix encoding, metadata to provide a controllable, predictable and enjoyable listening experience in a variety of listening and monitoring environments, loudness measurement and tools for proper use of key metadata parameters. The session also included a demonstration of tools and techniques and their application in providing a unique experience in different environments.
DAB+ Killer Apps with Energy Saving DAB+ can broadcast across platforms, including to mobile devices. It is a powerful spectrum efficient technology where broadcasters can keep analogue spectrum. DAB+ transmitters support green operation and the energy savings that can be achieved are comparable to operating 28 traditional analogue FM
transmitters. The DAB core standard is now free from royalties as patents have now expired. The DAB family of technologies greatly enhance experience through many unique features. Like DAB+ services you can run slide shows, EPGs, categorisation and some support short videos. The session also looked at the take up of DAB+ around the world. It has now been adopted by over 40 countries, with receivers available in a wide variety at different price ranges to suite the desired usage. There are a lot of apps available for mobile devices with very exciting and unique feature for receiving and enhancing the experience of DAB+, some of these were also displayed at the session. The workshop was presented by Jørn Jensen of WorldDMB, Joan Warner of CRA, Lindsay Cornell of BBC, Richard Redmond of Harris, Kathryn Brown and Les Sabel of CRA.
DVB-T2 Implementation – Optimising Satellite
Capacity for Regional and DTH Distribution Bernard Pichot and Colin Prior of Enensys explained their solutions for distribution of regional content over DVB-T2 and satellite DTH, through DVB-S/S2, combined networks. In the case of DTH architecture, the A/V content from the DVB-T2 service are multiplexed into a Multiple Program Transport Stream (MPTS) which is broadcast over satellite networks. The end user DTH receivers are able to render an A/V service from the received MPTS. For DVB-T2 distribution architecture in a SFN, the A/V content are multiplexed into a MPTS which is encapsulated into T2-MI protocol (DVB-T2 distribution protocol) which is then broadcast over satellite networks. The transmitter sites receive the T2-MI stream and broadcast it on the DVB-T2 network. The end user DTH
receivers are not able to read the T2-MI stream, however, this problem can be solved with a DVB-T2 local adapter, ‘T2Edge’ at transmitter sites. This method optimises the satellite, there being no duplication of content. It is DTH compliant, preserve SFN parameters and is single and multiple PLP compliant.
DVB-T2 Implementation
Philip Laven of DVB, Shimizu Kazuhiro of Sony, Alex Ng from Harris and Colin Prior of Enensys made presentations on DVB-T2 Implementation issues. The new profiles of DVB-T and DVB-T2 Lite were introduced targeting mobile broadcasting with increased flexibility and the simultaneous use of robust FFT size as T2-base utilising new robust low code rates and low power consumption. The new DVB-NGH (Next Generation Handheld) was described as having key techniques such as Time Frequency Slicing (TFS), MIMO, non-uniform constellations, rotated constellations (2-D and 4-D) and improved LDPC codes. The maximum data rate for DVB-NGH is 12Mbit/s. The session also discussed DVB-T2 transmitter requirements, available transmitter technologies and implementation issues. The workshop also included a demonstration of DVB-T2.
Quality Assurance and Monitoring in Broadcast Chain
Tektronix explained the aspects of quality assurance in a broadcast chain. The move to file-based systems has its benefits and now it is possible to monitor the data streams to maintain and ensure the required quality is maintained. During ingest and production, the technical parameters are examined include video
levels, gamut, black/frozen frames and audio levels, QA is very important as the broadcaster should comply with regulations laid down by the individual regulators regarding subtitling and closed captioning etc. Also not maintaining required quality could result in loss of revenue and credibility from advertisers and general audience. The session also ran hands-on demo of the monitoring and measurement equipment, showcasing how each parameter is controlled and what results are reported from the device. The session was presented by C B Law and Andrew Scott of Tektronix.
Some Alternatives for TV Production in the Challenging
Environment Hyung Jun Kim of KBS presented some alternatives for TV production. The broadcast production environment has many challenges including weakening
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