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38


Technical Review | April-June 2012


space link between its headquarters, to a remote village 5.5 km away. It is possible to achieve speeds of 20Mbps or more using future generations of hardware over a single channel link, compared to wired ADSL broadband that struggles to achieve 2Mbps across less than half the range. (Digital TV News)


Thailand to use DVB-T2 Standard


Thailand will adopt the DVB-T2 standard for commercial digital TV service, the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission has confirmed. The cabinet approved DVB-T2 as the digital broadcasting standard in compliance with the NBTC’s proposal. The adoption of the technology standard is a crucial step towards the digital transition, and the technology standard could accommodate future technology development. It could also maximise the use of spectrum to yield a greater number of TV channels. The NBTC expects set-top boxes for digital TV to range in price from $30-35 per unit. The change to digital TV will affect 20 million households in Thailand. (Bangkok Post)


Digital Radio


Fraunhofer Fraunhofer has introduced Extended HE-AAC, the Latest upgrade to the MPEG AAC family, at the Mobile World -Congress held in Barcelona.


Digital Boost in Australia


According to information released by Commercial Radio Australia in the Digital Radio Industry Report 2012, digital radio sales are ahead of forecast. Some 1.2 million people in the country are listening to digital radio in an average week and almost 800,000 digital radios have been sold in the top five cities Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide. The largest upsurge took place during the holiday season – between October of 2011 and January of 2012. The commercial radio industry has invested in the promotion of digital radio and worked very hard with retailers. (Radio World)


Internet BBC Plans New TV Download Service


The broadcaster is developing a video download service that will allow viewers to permanently download copies of favorite shows from the BBC archives – minutes after they have been aired. The service to be known as project Barcelona, would enable the purchase of programmes for a relatively modest fee, adding that the digital archive would stay open for good and shows would remain available to license fee payers.


The plan will be put before the BBC trust governing body of the BBC later this year. The content producers in the UK would also need to give their support to the project. At the moment, BBC shows are available for free for 30 days on the BBC iPlayer service; the rights are then sold by BBC Worldwide or the producers themselves to services such as iTunes to sell as downloads. With Project Barcelona, BBC intended to set up a “digital shop” for programme downloads, although other existing providers would also be able to buy the content.


(APB) Extended HE-AAC audio codec


The codec developer said Extended HE-AAC significantly improves the audio quality of music and speech, particularly at very low bit rates of 8 kbps and more, and is compatible with HE-AAC streams.


As a result, Extended HE-AAC can improve the quality of existing low bitrate services or more audio channels can be transmitted at a given bit rate according to Fraunhofer.


Radio Listening Goes Digital New Bollywood on Demand


Premium Indian films and TV shows can now be streamed to Apple mobile devices from the new online entertainment service Spuul, following the launch of a free iOS application. Over 100 titles are offered for free, with others charged at US$0.99 per movie for 72 hours of unlimited viewing. In addition, a premium subscription is available for an introductory price of $4.99 a month. One attractive function allows users’ playback positions to be saved between different devices. So, for example, if a movie is paused on an iPhone, viewing can be resumed from the same point on an iPad or computer. (Rapid TV News)


Astro Unveils New Service Digital Radio


Nearly 30% of radio listening is now digital. Digital platforms accounted for 29.2% of all listening in the first quarter of 2012, marginally up from 29.1% in the previous quarter. The number of adults who claim to own a DAB set at home is now 42.6%, more than double the 19.5% who said they owned one five years ago.


(www.guardian.co.uk)


Astro Malaysia is targeting to penetrate households in Malaysia with its new service ‘Astro On-The-Go,’ which delivers non-stop entertainment on smartphones, tablets and laptops. The service will be launched in three phases, of which the first will see all existing Astro customers having a free preview. The second phase, will see only Astro B.yond Internet protocol TV customers and those with more than one decoder entitled to the service. Astro On-The-Go will also be available to Android devices in this phase. In the last phase, the service will be offered to all Astro customers and subsequently non-Astro customers by year-end. (ABU News)


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