DVB at India’s BES Expo

Feyo Kolff, Marketing & Communications Manager DVB

The Broadcast Engineering Society of India’s (BES) annual International Conference and Exhibition on terrestrial and satellite broadcasting took place from February 24th to 26th 2011 in New Delhi, India. The theme of this year’s conference and exhibition was ‘Broadcast Technology – Emerging Trends’.

One emerging trend is the very strong global interest for DVB’s second generation terrestrial standard, DVB-T2. India has recently announced plans for a tender for DVB-T2 networks in most major cities across the country, making this potentially the world’s largest DVB-T2 community. With this positive decision and direction, the DVB Project was present at BES Expo to support the Indian broadcast industry with this choice. 

DVB’s Chairman Phil Laven gave a keynote presentation covering changing media consumption, mobility and IPTV, and stressed the importance of the efficiency of broadcast systems. Other DVB member speakers followed in the various conference sessions and workshop focussing on how DVB-T2 accomplishes this efficiency. Speakers included Nils Ahrens from Rohde & Schwarz, Gerard Faria of Teamcast, Jerome David of Thomson Broadcast, Peter Siebert of DVB, Snehal Deshapnde of Samsung, Pradeep Asthana of Newtec, and Colin Prior of S&T.

To make DVB-T2 really come alive, DVB’s booth demonstrated a variety of available DVB-T2 receiver devices. This included products from Humax, Pace, ADB and a Samsung LED TV with built-in DVB-T2 tuner, which attracted quite a bit of attention. These four devices were receiving four HD channels from a locally streamed DVB-T2 multiplex, which was also broadcast over the air from the Teamcast booth close by. To complete the broadcast chain the demo also included a Rohde & Schwarz spectrum analyzer to give visitors a closer look at the rotated constellation and other features of DVB-T2.

The feedback at the conference and exhibition was very positive and Doordarshan engineers are keen to start work on the planning and implementation of DVB-T2 in India in the very near future. We are all excited about the enthusiasm for DVB technology in this big country and look forward to the next steps.