DVB Pavilion at NAB2004 Hosts End-To-End OCAP Demo & New DVB-H Technology

Building on the success of satellite transmission specification DVB-S, DVB-S2 offers greater flexibility and better performance over existing satellites at reasonable cost. The new open specification offers a 30 percent capacity increase under the same transmission conditions, more robust reception for the same spectrum efficiency and will operate from Carrier-to-Noise ratios as low as – 2 dB to + 16 dB. Spectrum efficiencies up to 4.5 bit/sec/Hz can be achieved.

DVB-H is another key DVB technology which will be showcased on the DVB Pavilion. It is based on the current DVB-T standard and is purposed for the new service scenarios where small, pocket size mobile terminals receive broadcast services on the move. The new DVB-H standard, while by no way changing the current digital TV business models for fixed reception, could provide new business possibilities for a variety of players from broadcast and cellular operators to chip and equipment manufacturers. For the broadcast operators it would provide a new vehicle to reach their customers while they are on the move and for cellular operators it could provide a cost efficient way to implement data broadcast services. For the end user this new standard would mean a more inexpensive and richer content experience in the mobile environment.

DVB specifications and other documentation are readily available and DVB experts are on hand to answer questions concerning all DVB specifications. The DVB Pavilion is also hosting a number of demonstrations provided by the following members of the DVB Project: DigiSoft, Fraunhofer IMK, Osmosys, ProTelevision, S&T, SysMedia and Unisoft.

As the world’s first vendor to have a commercially available DVB-H product, ProTelevision will be showing its PT5780 DVB modulator equipped with the DVB-H option. This upgrade makes it fully compatible with the DVB-H standard: 4K IFFT mode, native or 8K symbol interleaver, TPS signalling and cell-ID. It is also compatible with the 5MHz channel bandwidth option.

DigiSoft, Fraunhofer IMK, Osmosys, S&T, SysMedia and Unisoft are collaborating on an end-to-end demonstration of an advanced system designed for the delivery of OCAP (Open Cable Application Platform) services. OCAP has been developed for use in the US Cable industry by CableLabs and incorporates DVB’s GEM (Globally Executable MHP) specification. The system, built from the products of the six companies, has been integrated to form a complete OCAP based software infrastructure. This technology demonstration illustrates that OCAP infrastructure is developing rapidly with trial deployments expected at the end of 2004.

The demo will showcase the following products: Osmosys’ OCAP based middleware running on OCAP developer set-top boxes from ADB; Strategy &Technology’s TSBroadcaster and TSPlayer products providing scheduled encoding and play-out of OCAP transport streams; Fraunhofer IMK’s JAME iTV production system that includes JAME Author – a WYSIWYG authoring tool targeted for fast and easy content creation, a server which optimises the application for broadcasting and a high performance MHP and OCAP presentation engine for displaying the content; Sysmedia’s PLASMA MAGENTA iTV production and content management system for generating Digital Teletext and interactive advertising content; DigiSoft’s OCAP Application Management Platform; and UniSoft’s OCAP Security File Generator for the creation of authenticated OCAP applications.