The first DVB-I tests have been taking place in Spain thanks to the latest example of a long-running collaboration between the public broadcaster RTVE and the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM).
Under the auspices of the RTVE Chair at UPM, a live event at the end of April featured the first pilot of RTVE channels delivered using DVB-I linked to a digital terrestrial television (DTT) broadcast. The event included a demonstration of the channel tuning procedure.
Other companies contributing to the initiative included Cellnex Telecom, Dolby, Sapec and the Televés Corporation, all of whom are on the advisory committee of the RTVE Chair at UPM. Receivers for the tests were supplied by Vestel, who provided development software with new DVB-I support running on current range of their production TV sets.
The pilot also made use of the DVB-I reference application to generate the service lists.
For the event, a custom DTT multiplex was created by UPM engineers and broadcast in the local area on a temporary channel. The multiplex included a link to the DVB-I service list in the DTT service information tables, and the channels were automatically available to the user by pressing the EPG button on the remote control. It is believed that this is the first time a DVB-I service list has been signalled over the air in this way.
The trial was built around the Mutua Madrid Open tennis tournament, which was being broadcast on the tdp HD channel as a single feed. Thanks to DVB-I, users were able to select the coverage of any of the seven tennis courts through additional channels, allowing any match to be chosen without the use of an app. The user was shown 11 channels (four DTT plus seven delivered via the internet) through which they could navigate.
The pilot has highlighted other possible uses that DVB-I can enable including linking channels to DTT broadcasts with personalised content, thematic content (for example eGaming for the tdp channel) or content with other enhanced features such as UHD, virtual reality or multiview.
