Craig Birkmaier wrote: > Can you provide any links to information about receiver > mandates in Europe? I did post this info to the list in the past, when the decisions were first announced. And here they are as I found them now. This first document is a comprehensive study of European DTV in France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and the UK, provided by the DGTVi. http://www.dgtvi.it/stat/Allegati/Secondo%20Rapporto%20sulla%20Televisione%20Digitale%20Terrestre%20%20in%20Europa%20%20.pdf says in page 11: "La diffusione della Tdt nelle famiglie è caratterizzata nell'ultimo anno dal ruolo crescente dei televisori integrati di tuner digitale terrestre (Idtv). Francia e Italia hanno previsto obblighi normativi per la vendita di televisori integrati a partire dal 2008 (nel caso francese l'obbligo prevede anche che il televisore integrato debba ricevere l'Alta Definizione). La Francia si distingue anche per la presenza di altri device integrati con tuner Tdt, primi fra tutti i decoder ibridi per la ricezione dell'Iptv e della Tdt." So, it says that the takeup of DTT in this past year has been characterized by the increasing role of the integrated rceeiver, what they call idtv. And that France and Italy have planned for an integrated receiver mandate by 2008. The French integrated receiver mandate includes HDTV reception. And that the French mandate will include other receivers along with the DTT receiver in its mandate, first among these being IPTV. In p.40, it says that by 2009, all TV sets have the digital receiver mandated, in France and Italy. The French CSA document that describes the whole transition strategy is http://www.csa.fr/upload/decision/consultation_CSA_SNAA_071311.pdf It also mentions transition strategies of numerous other countries, in Europe and elsewhere. In p.11, it says: "C'est ainsi qu'à partir du 6 mars 2008, «les téléviseurs vendus aux consommateurs sur le territoire national intègrent un adaptateur permettant la réception des services de la télévision numérique terrestre». De plus, «les industriels et les distributeurs d'équipement électronique grand public sont tenus d'informer de façon détaillée et visible les consommateurs des capacités de chaque téléviseur, adaptateur, enregistreur ou tout autre équipement récepteur de télévision à recevoir des signaux numériques»." So, starting 6 March 2008, all TVs sold in France have to incorporate the DTT receiver. Furthermore, all other TV reception equipment, including recorders etc., must come with detailed information describing their capabilities in DTV reception. So this is very similar wording as used by the FCC, to describe our 1 March 2007 mandate. > My educated guess is that the ATSC would not seek FCC approval > for any changes, nor would they try to get the FCC to mandate that > any enhancements be required in new receivers. The FCC mandate was > designed to facilitate the DTV transition. As this would be a > post-transition change, I suspect that it would be up to the CE > vendors to implement any enhancements. Agreed. And also, there should be no need to seek FCC approval of the new operational modes, as long as the new modes exhibit the same RF characteristics as 8-VSB, such as channel bandwidth, ERP levels, and peak to average ratio. > The DVB-T2 draft standard > > From documents published on the Internet by RAI and others, > the following characteristics are expected for the T2 standard:[5] > > - Modulation will be standard COFDM in one of the modes QPSK, > 16-QAM, 64-QAM, or 256-QAM (but not 128-QAM). > > - OFDM modes will be 1k, 2k, 4k, 8k, 16k and 32k. The symbol > length for 32k mode will be about 4 ms. > > - Guard intervals will be 1/128, 1/32, 1/16, 19/256, 1/8, 19/128, > and 1/4. (For 32k mode, the maximum is 1/8.) > > - FEC will be LDPC and BCH (as in DVB-S2), with rates 1/2, 3/5, > 2/3, 3/4, 4/5, and 5/6. > > - There will be fewer pilots, in 8 different pilot-patterns, and > equalization will be based also on the RAI CD3 system. > > - In the 32k mode, a larger part of the standard 8 Mhz channel > can be used, adding about 2% extra capacity. > > - DVB-T2 will be specified for 1.7, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 10 MHz > channel bandwidth. > > - MISO (Multiple-Inputs Single-Output) may be used (Alamouti > scheme), but MIMO will not be used. Diversity receivers can be > used (as they are with DVB-T). > > - Bundling of more channels into a SuperMUX (called TFS) is not > in the standard, but may be added later. So, I see an increased reliance on equalization, and less on active pilots, to decrease C/N margins, although not to the extent the Chinese went to (and not to the extent of 8T-VSB either). I see improved FEC techniques, going to LDPC rather than turbo coding, like the Chinese system. Also designed to reduce the C/N margin. The 32K mode is obviously designed for more realistic SFN deployment, but it will be interesting to see how these super slow symbols do with equalization. And I see options for a denser constellation, where again the C/N margins will be affected. Now let's put this all in context with what we have here. There is no reason why 16T-VSB couldn't also be considered, e.g. using turbo coding or LDPC instead of Viterbi convolutional coding. That would be exactly equivalent to the 256-QAM option of DVB-T2, but would not otherwise change any of the channel characteristics that the FCC would worry about. As Al Limberg has mentioned on many occasions, just doing a more clever combinatiuon of the existing trellis and RS coding should double the number of correctable bytes in each MPEG-2 TS frame (20 vs 10), and this improvement would require no change whatever to the transmission standard. > An example for a UK MFN DVB-T profile (QAM64, 2k, CR2/3, GI1/32) > and a DVB-T2 equivalent (QAM256, 32k, CR3/5, GI1/128) shows an > increase in bit rate from 24.13 Mbit/s to 35.4 Mbit/s (+46.5%). The GI you show is essentially like saying no GI at all. So what you are describing here is something that could just as easily be done with a new 16T-VSB. This is all very good stuff. The ATSC could just as well be doing this sort of thing, although again, tweaking what you already have will always be the easiest course of action. And there is plenty of tweaking still possible. Bert ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways: - Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org - By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.