This issue's highlights
Join Us In Vienna For DVB World
Group Set Up To Define Requirements For New Emergency Warning System
Preventing Man In The Middle Attacks On Smart TVs
Report From The BES Expo & Conference - Dehli, India
DVB Publishes Two New BlueBooks
DVB Speakers' Corner
Standardization Activities
Happy Tenth Anniversary To The African Union of Broadcasting
Spectrum Agreement Safeguards Future Of Free-To-Air TV Distribution
Join the Global Community of Digital Experts
DVB World 2017 takes place in just over two weeks time in Vienna with a host of presentations by preeminent speakers. There is still time to reserve your place for 'Unlocking the Digital World'.
Join Us In Vienna For DVB World

This year, Vienna is to be the setting for the DVB World Conference and Exhibition where an impressive line-up of top industry experts will bring us the latest developments in digital TV technologies, standards and business models.

The action packed 3 day event will start with a VR Masterclass by Peter Kauff and Oliver Schreer from Fraunhofer HHI.

Keynote speakers will include the renowned AndrĂ© Kudelski of the Kudelski Group, Andreas Gall from Red Bull Media House and Albert Heuberger of Fraunhofer IIS - who will ponder on 'The Limit of Moore's Law'. Special guests from Austria, Alfred Grinschgl from RTR-Gmbh and Alexander Wrabetz from ORF will highlight the host country's broadcast landscape.

Over the 3 days we will learn the latest DVB developments in TV business models, satellite and DTT solutions, hybrid TV, OTT, UHD, HEVC, VR and many more digital TV hot topics.

Experts are drawn from: Adobe, Akamai, b<>com, Bitmovin, BT, DTG, DVB, EBU, Eutelsat, Harmonic, IRT, maxdome, Mediaset, NBTC, Nokia, Panasonic, Qualcomm, RWTH Aachen, Sky, Teracom.

The three days offer an ideal atmosphere for networking with extra long coffee breaks and lunches. On the first day, a special Vienna Evening Event and Dinner sponsored by Newtec will also provide the chance to take a ride on Vienna's Riesenrad, one of the oldest operating Ferris wheels in the world. The DVB World Dinner will be an ideal setting to connect with other delegates, exchange ideas and explore new perspectives. 

A Vienna sightseeing bus tour on the evening of the second day will give more opportunity for networking. 

Coffee breaks throughout the 3 days will be an opportunity to explore the attached exhibition zone.

Summaries of the presentations are now available on the DVB World website so you can see what you will learn when you join us in just 2 weeks.

Read the impressive speaker biographies here:  www.dvbworld.org/speakers

DVB World 2017 takes place March 13 - 15. The three day Conference & Exhibition will be held at the Hilton Waterfront Hotel, overlooking the River Danube. The hotel is close to Vienna city center and is a 20-minute ride from Vienna International Airport.

Don't delay - Register now!
Group Set Up To Define Requirements For New Emergency Warning System

An Emergency Warning System (EWS) enables authorities to inform a wide audience of an immediate or on-going emergency via the TV broadcast system. The ability for a broadcast technology to support EWS is increasingly vital in many countries where natural disasters, such as extreme weather conditions or earthquakes, are experienced on a regular basis.

Following approval by the DVB Commercial Module (CM), a group has been formed with a remit to develop Commercial Requirements for a complete second generation DVB Emergency Warning System. The group will host an initial meeting today at Samsung Electronics Research UK.

Important sections of the DVB system already allow for the support for EWS signaling, but this capability does not yet extend throughout all DVB technologies, thereby leaving DVB without a complete standardized solution, particularly at the tuner/RF stage. This could lead to some countries deciding on defining their own proprietary solutions, which could give rise to potential market fragmentation.

The group is aiming to have their Commercial Requirements ready in time for approval at the October CM and thus enable the Technical Module to commence work immediately.

The ultimate objective is to ensure that countries using DVB technology can implement an EWS system which meets their local requirements and also conforms to a standard implementation. This would in turn make it easier for CE manufacturers, broadcasters and the authorities to implement nationwide systems to protect their citizens, based on internationally agreed specifications thereby avoiding market fragmentation.

A Fact Sheet on the existing DVB - Emergency Warning System can be found here
Preventing Man In The Middle Attacks On Smart TVs

Today's connected Smart TVs that support interactive services have more in common with the computer in your home than the television sets of yesterday. This means that they could be at risk of being manipulated via the broadband interface. In addition, academic research has demonstrated that such an attack can also be initiated via the terrestrial RF input. In demonstrated cases, 'man-in-the-middle attacks' were performed by overriding the terrestrial broadcast signal and placing malicious codes in the TV software which enabled the hijacker to control, for example, the webcam and then stream the pictures from the living room back to the internet.

Just a few years ago such an attack on the broadcast channel would have required a truckload of expensive broadcast equipment. Now, with ongoing miniaturization, the necessary devices have become inexpensive and are easily transported. It must be said, that for the time being, there is little real-world evidence of such attacks. However, acknowledging the potential risks, DVB has worked on a comprehensive and appropriate solution providing the necessary protection for consumers and industry.

At its 85th meeting, the DVB Steering Board approved updates to TS 102 809 "Signaling and carriage of interactive applications and services in Hybrid broadcast/broadband environments" adding an authentication mechanism to prevent 'man in the middle' attacks. The updated specification enables broadcasters to add authentication information to the signaling of their interactive services. In essence, the television receiver learns the legitimate transmission on each channel and will then identify and reject any subsequent tampering. This provides an extra layer of defense for TV sets and their owners in addition to manufacturers' activities to improve their products security.

It is now up to broadcasters and TV manufacturers to implement the new features of TS 102 809 to protect the privacy of the end-user.
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Report From The BES Expo & Conference - Dehli, India

Once a year, the Indian Broadcasting Engineering Society (BES) hosts the BES EXPO and Conference. This year the event took place  on 2 - 4 February in Delhi. A wide range of exhibitors covering all aspects of content creation as well as transmission presented their products and services. Running in parallel, the BES Conference with the theme 'Hybrid Technologies in Broadcasting - New Opportunities' attracted speakers from India as well as other parts of the world. DVB supported the conference as 'Supporting Partner' and in addition the Executive Director joined the conference as a speaker and session chairman.

This year's conference had a focus on hybrid technology in broadcast but also touched on DTT and UHD. In a presentation on 'ATSC3.0 vs DVB-T2' Peter Siebert pointed out that spectral efficiency of a single RF channel has only marginally improved with ATSC3.0 as compared to DVB-T2. The new features offered by the North American standard such as Layer Division Multiplexing (LDM) and MIMO still have to prove themselves as being operational and relevant in a broadcast environment. Furthermore, the IP transport layer proposed by ATSC would not be really suitable for India with its low broadband penetration. Finally, the ecosystem for ATSC3.0 is not well established, which would result in high equipment costs and presently does not provide a complete end to end chain. Considering all these aspects DVB-T2 is the better choice for DTT in India.

In his second presentation, Peter touched upon the new DVB specification for advanced UHD features such as High Dynamic Range (HDR), Higher Frame Rates (HFR) and Next Generation Audio (NGA). Combined with the already specified 4K UHD resolution and wider color gamut, these new elements will bring broadcast to a quality level that is close to the capabilities of the human eye and any further improvement would not be noticeable. Therefore, we can expect that these new features will be remain unsurpassed for quite some time.

DVB specifications are the basis for broadcast in India. DVB is very proud of the important role its technology plays in the subcontinent. The cooperation with BES and the participation in events like the BES Conference are of great importance to DVB. 
DVB Publishes Two New BlueBooks

Two BlueBooks were published by DVB in January and are available for download.

DVB BlueBook A308, Specification for Service Information (SI) in DVB systems, specifies the SI data that forms a part of DVB bitstreams, in order that the user can be provided with information to assist in the selection of services and/or events within the bitstream, and so that the Integrated Receiver Decoder (IRD) can automatically configure itself for the selected service. The DVB BlueBook, in combination with its ETSI publication EN 300 468, applies to all DVB transmission system and is therefore at the heart of DVB technology. In the latest update, the necessary elements for TTML and UHD bitmap based subtitles, as well as for the Man in the Middle countermeasures, are added to the SI specification. The SI BlueBook also contains the necessary SI updates for the UHD 1 Phase 2 features (HDRF, HFR, NGA).

DVB BlueBook A165, DVB Extensions to the CI Plus Specification (CI Plus 1.4), specifies extensions to the CI Plus V1.3 specification [3], which was produced and continues to be published by CI Plus LLP.  The following is a list of the features specified as extensions to CI Plus V1.3: Multi-stream handling;  CI Plus browser extensions; CICAM application launching; URI (usage rules information) extensions; Watermarking and transcoding capability.

From time to time, DVB publishes documents following their approval by the Steering Board in the form of BlueBooks. In practice, these are either commercial requirements documents, policy statements, or technical specifications which are in the process of being standardized. In the latter case, DVB has decided that there is value in the rapid publication of draft specifications as BlueBooks, pending their formal standardization. BlueBooks are subject to modification and a published ETSI standard takes precedence over its corresponding BlueBook.
DVB Speakers' Corner

ABU DIGITAL BROADCASTING SYMPOSIUM 2017
6 - 9 March, The Royale Chulan Hotel, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. DVB 's Executive Director, Peter Siebert will conduct a half-day workshop on 'From Network Planning to the Living room - How to Set Up a DTT Network' on day one of the Symposium. The workshop will focus on terrestrial network implementation covering topics such as; Networking Planning ( LSTelcom), Encoding and Multiplexing ( Rohde & Schwarz), DVB-T2 Gateways and DTT monitoring (ENENSYS), DVB-T2 Exciters and Transmitter (SYES)Consumer Receive Devices (Sony).  The workshop will also provide a hands-on demonstration using industry standard equipment.

On day two he will give a presentation on UHD and HDR in DVB.
 
DVB World is running from the 13 - 15 March with a host of presentations on DVB technology. Below are just a few mentions of some of the speakers and their presentations. The full program can be viewed on the event website.

Erik Stare (Teracom)  - WiB - A New Wideband System Concept for DTT
Angelo Pettazzi (Mediaset) - The New HbbTV 2.0 Market in Italy
Thierry Fautier (Harmonic) - UHD: Live Unicast & Scaling IP over Multicast
Simon Jones (BT) - The DVB 'Beyond The Transport Stream' Study Mission
David Wood (EBU) - The DVB Virtual Reality Study Mission Report
Virginie Drugeon (Panasonic) - The DVB UHD Specification (TS 101 154)
www.dvbworld.org

Speakers' Corner is a regular column of DVB Scene eNews that serves to promote Members the are giving DVB related presentations at the various conferences, seminars and events around the world. DVB Scene eNews is published 10 times a year (each month with combined issues for Dec/Jan and July/Aug). Publication is on the last Thursday of each month with a copy deadline on the preceding Friday. The eNews is distributed to over 5,000 subscribers.

So, if you are a DVB Member speaking on a DVB topic at an upcoming event get in touch and let us know and we will publish it here.
Standardization Activities

23 February - CM-EWS (Emergency Warning System) (Samsung UK offices). The meeting w ill address the drafting of the group's Terms of Reference and the election of a chair.

27 February, 6 March, 13 March, 20 March - DVB IPI DASH. Regular Monday Webex telco to work on a new revision of the MPEG-DASH profile for the transport of ISO BMFF based DVB services over IP networks. This work will lead to a specification for UHD-1 phase 2 DVB DASH Streaming including support for HDR, HFR and NGA.

28 February, 14 March, 28 March - ABR Multicast taskforce plenary group. Webex telco meetings for all interested parties and on alternate weeks a focus meeting to discuss specific technical topics. The technical specification will aim at fulfilling the Commercial Requirements for the transmission of media streams at multiple different bit rates and qualities, in which at least part of the OTT transmission is achieved using IP multicast.

15 March - TM-WIB (Hilton Danube Vienna). The purpose of the meeting of this Study Mission Group is analyze  the technical potential and feasibility of the Wideband reuse-1 techniques. At its first meeting, the group will agree on t he scope of, and approaches to, the studies to be undertaken. The final output will be a report delivered to the Technical Module by January 2018 at the latest.

16 March - IPRM (Hilton Danube Vienna). I tems on the Intellectual Property Rights Module agenda include: Work on possible IPR related initiatives in light of the HEVC and DASH experiences; Continue to provide a forum for DASH and HEVC licensing; Review of recent actions taken by European Commission as part of its focus on the Digital Single Market / ICT priority plan.

21 March - CM-AVC/TM-AVC (Starling Hotel, Geneva). The committees  are meeting to discuss commercial requirements and specifications covering UHDTV, multicast ABR, supplementary service streams, next generation audio and subtitling.
Happy Tenth Anniversary To The  African Union of Broadcasting

The African Union of Broadcasting (AUB) is currently marking its tenth anniversary. The celebration is taking place within the framework of its General Assembly which is being held from 20 - 25 February and brings together Director Generals of the African broadcasting services (AUB Members), Presidents and Secretary Generals of other Broadcasting Unions, Members of Governments as well as Media and Sports personalities. The DVB, EBU and its operational arm, Eurovision, are in attendance for the occasion.

Eurovision presented its portfolio of services, including its FLEX Hybrid solution for transmitting content over satellite, fibre and IP as well as its new portal - a dashboard which allows broadcasters to route, monitor and control their primary video feed and enhanced data in one place. Delegates had the opportunity to learn more about Eurovision services by speaking with experts at a dedicated stand.

The AUB has produced two symposiums for the event: the first was on the commitment of African Governments to the management and funding of the sports movement across the continent. Giacomo Mazzone, Head of Institutional Relations at the EBU, was on the panel. The second symposium was on the future of public service media in the digital era.

The DVB's PCM Vice-Chair, Stan Baaijens and EBU's Technology & Innovation and Media Departments are taking part today in the sessions to highlight the opportunities that digital terrestrial television (DTT) can offer to African broadcasters, including: content, business, political and technical aspects. Opportunities for collaboration between the two Sister Unions on this subject are also on the agenda.

DVB technology is used widely throughout Africa and the DVB Project would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the African Union of Broadcasting on this special anniversary and would like to wish them all the success for the future.
Spectrum Agreement Safeguards Future Of Free-To-Air TV Distribution

The EBU has welcomed the recent vote by the European Parliament's Industry Committee on the long term future of the UHF frequencies. The vote validates an EU interinstitutional agreement on access to UHF spectrum below 700 MHz for terrestrial TV broadcasting until at least 2030.

European public service media make their channels available on all TV platforms - digital terrestrial television (DTT), satellite, cable and IP-based networks. DTT, which relies on UHF spectrum, nevertheless remains the most effective means of ensuring that every citizen has access to free-to-air TV. Roughly 250 million people receive their television services through DTT in Europe.

EBU Head of Technology and Innovation Simon Fell said: "DTT broadcasting is indispensable. There are no other technologies currently out there capable of replicating its advantages, both for viewers and broadcasters".

The text dismisses the idea to give 'downlink-only' access to mobile operators in the bands below 700 MHz, as originally proposed by the European Commission. This approach would have created long-term uncertainty for future innovation and investment in 'free-to-air' TV distribution.

EU Member states will also have the flexibility to set the clearance of the 700 MHz for mobile use to 2022 rather than 2020 if necessary and justified.

The final text of the Decision on the use of the 470-790 MHz frequency band in the EU is expected to be published in April, shortly after the formal approval of the text by the European Parliament's plenary in the course of March.

Source: EBU
Join the Global Community of Digital Experts

DVB Member
It's never been a better time to join DVB. Membership of the DVB Project is open to all organisations involved in digital broadcasting and offers involvement in the development of the DVB specifications. Joining the DVB Project involves signing the Memorandum of Understanding and payment of an initial annual membership fee of 6,000 Euros. Thereafter, there is an annual membership fee of 8,000 Euros.

The key advantages of becoming a DVB Member are to:
  • Co-develop future specifications through technical proposals, IPR, Steering Board, etc.
  • Gain early view of specifications through DVB meetings, documents, email lists
  • Network with other DVB Members and industry partners at meetings and events
  • Promote DVB standards through workshops, seminars, conferences, trade shows
  • Promote your company and DVB products through DVB events, meetings and publications.
Employees of member companies gain the following benefits:
  • Access to DVB documents, meeting reports, draft specifications, etc.
  • The right to submit documents for consideration by modules and sub-groups
  • The right to join, follow and contribute to the DVB email reflectors
  • The right to attend module and sub-group meetings and conference calls
  • Take part in the DVB specification process, with the right to stand for Steering Board election.
In addition to the above benefits, DVB Members will also be invited from time to time to contribute to the promotion of key DVB standards, whether through trade shows, conferences or seminars. These opportunities can increase market awareness of your company and bring you to the forefront of your respective area of expertise.

Join now to be part of the most successful organization of its kind. For more information about joining the DVB Project, contact Eva Markvoort.

 


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