Several DVB specification updates plus new satellite commercial requirements

The DVB Steering Board met at the end of June to round off a particularly intense and productive meeting cycle. In addition to the approval of an updated DVB-I specification and related implementation guidelines, previously reported, a raft of other documents were approved for publication.

DVB-RCS2 for non-geostationary satellites

The DVB-RCS2 standard – second-generation Return Channel Satellite – enables the provision of a variety of interactive services to consumers as well as professional and governmental users. With throughputs of up to 100 Mbps per user in the downstream, DVB-RCS2 has been used across multiple market segments around the world for more than a decade.

While DVB-RCS2 currently uses geostationary satellites, the recent launch of constellations of satellites into other orbits (so-called NGSO) using proprietary access schemes has reawakened interest in extending the features of DVB standards to enable their use in such systems. Commercial and governmental entities have expressed an interest in adding the necessary signalling and beam handover features needed for a DVB system to operate in LEO or MEO (low or middle earth orbit) constellations and hence the original DVB-RCS2 commercial requirements have been extended (DVB BlueBook C107) to incorporate the necessary features.

In a related development, the Steering Board also approved the publication of DVB BlueBook A155-2r3, a revision of the lower layer specification for DVB-RCS2. The update adds references to satellite beam-hopping signalling. It will be forwarded to ETSI for publication as a new version of EN 301 545-2.

Other specification updates

Several other specification updates have been published as DVB BlueBooks following the recent meeting cycle.

An update to the DVB Targeted Advertising (DVB-TA) specification that deals with DVB-DASH streams (DVB-TA Part 3) adds the reporting of advert playback, an important capability for the tracking of advertising campaigns. The updated specification has been published as DVB BlueBook A178-3r1.

While verification and validation (V&V) work continues on the DVB Native IP (DVB-NIP) specification, an updated specification covers alignment with other relevant DVB specifications, as well as several bug fixes arising from feedback received during the V&V process. A revision of the original specification has been published as DVB BlueBook A180r1. (Related updates of the DVB Generic Stream Encapsulation (DVB-GSE) and DVB Multicast Adaptive Bitrate (DVB-MABR) specifications have also been published, addressing issues raised during the DVB-NIP V&V process.)

The DVB Home Broadcast (DVB-HB) specification has been updated with a device discovery mechanism based on multicast DNS and DNS service discovery. This update is intended to create alignment with DVB-NIP. It is published as DVB BlueBook A179r2. 

Access the latest versions of all DVB specifications and commercial requirements in our library.

DVB workplan

Finally, as happens following every DVB meeting cycle, the overall DVB workplan has been updated. It shows all current work items, milestones and expected delivery dates. The workplan is published in the How We Work section of this site.