Dermot Nolan, the new director-general of the UK’s digital TV industy group, the DTG, has claimed that the UK TV regulator, Ofcom, has missed the point about the next-generation digital-terrestrial standard, DVB-T2.
“The fact that it can allow 30% more to be squeezed into a multiplex is not the issue,” Nolan told Connected TV. “It’s to do with spectrum efficiency [at a national level].”
Nolan said studies by transmission company Arqiva, amongst others, had shown that DVB-T2’s capability to use ‘32k’ mode (32,000 carriers as opposed to the 8k (8,000 carriers) used in the UK for DVB-T) meant that it would be possible to achieve “95% coverage nationwide using 116 transmitters instead of 1,200,” with 28MBit/s multiplexes.
This would require the adoption of single-frequency networks instead of multi-frequency ones as currently used, said Nolan, adding that this aspect of DVB-T2 had been “completely overlooked.”
Nolan argued that since Ofcom’s remit included maximising spectrum efficiency at national level, its proposal that DVB-T2 should be adopted only on a single multiplex to allow a 3 or 4 channel terrestrial HDTV service was misconceived. “Just one mux going to DVB-T2 - there’s no long-term plan,” he said. What was required was a ’second switchover’, where the whole network would be transitioned to DVB-T2 and MPEG-4 at the same time.
Meanwhile, Nolan reiterated the request by broadcasters that they should be temporarily ’loaned’ spectrum to allow a greater number of terrestrial HDTV channels to be offered from the outset. Nolan said that two 8MHz single-frequency networks would be sufficient - these could then be handed back at a later date.
“Small-channel offers have been shown to fail,” said Nolan, pointing to the example of Sky’s predecessor, BSB, Freeview’s predecessor, ITV Digital and the short-lived mobile TV offer BT Movio. “There needs to be a credible consumer offer.”
In any case, he said, there was “no way” that DVB-T2 could be introduced by 2009, as Ofcom suggested, owing to the software testing and field-trials involved.
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