The current Gold sticker in Italy
Part of the plan is to launch two new stickers identifying connected and DVB-T2 compatible receivers.
Called Gold T2 and Silver T2, the new stickers will be used from early 2014 to identify all receivers that are capable of receiving the DVB-T2 standard with HEVC encoding.
Gold and Silver stickers are already in use by the Italian TV industry to denote ‘Connected’ and ‘Top-Up’ services respectively. They will no longer be required from January 2013. The new Gold and Silver T2 stickers will be used to identify the different types of DVB-T2 receivers.
Following the launch of DVB-T2 by private broadcaster Europa 7 in 2010, the Italian government decided earlier this year that all DTT tuners sold in Italy from 2015 onwards must include the DVB-T2 standard using HEVC profile, both for set-top boxes and for IDTVs.
On July 4, 2012, Italy became all-digital with the switch-off of the last analogue transmitters.
In order to maximise frequency efficiency, the DGIVi believes that the H.264/AVC encoding is not sufficient and expects HVEC to be the new standard.
The Joint Technical Group DGTVi / HDFI will release an Italian version of the 3.0 HD-Book DTT specifying the HEVC profile in 2013.
