Brazil’s SBTVD Forum has recommended adoption of ATSC 3.0 for the country's new TV 3.0 standard in preference to Japan’s Advanced ISDB-T in the final field-testing stage, after China’s DTMB and 5G Broadcast were dismissed earlier after lab evaluation. This represents a major coup for ATSC 3.0, which until now has been almost entirely confined to the three North American countries of the USA, Canada and Mexico.

It is equally a blow for Japan’s ISDB-T, which has dominated Latin America in a slightly revised form since the arrival of digital terrestrial TV in the continent from 2006 onwards. The Latin American version called ISDB-T International, which has also been adopted in two African and a few central American countries, differs primarily in using the H.264 codec rather than MPEG-2, as a slightly enhanced version.

This comes after a four-year process instigated in July 2020 when the SBTVD Forum, the country’s digital TV agency, issued a Call for Proposals for TV 3.0. The final decision had become almost a formality given that meanwhile Brazil had already chosen ATSC 3.0 technologies as part of both the broadcast and broadband components of its TV 3.0 system.

These include ROUTE/DASH Transport, MPEG-H Audio, IMSC1 Captions, HDR10 Video High Dynamic Range EOTF and ATSC 3.0 Advanced Emergency Alerting. Admittedly only the last is unique to ATSC 3.0 but they have all been incorporated in it. Taken together, it would have been surprising if the SBTVD Forum then failed to follow through with a full recommendation to adopt ATSC 3.0.

ROUTE/DASH Transport, for example, has been developed to integrate streaming and linear broadcast delivery over IP networks. This combines ROUTE as a unidirectional transport protocol over individual data packets for broadcast delivery with HTTP adaptive streaming on the broadband side.

A significant point is ROUTE/DASH allows content formatted for streaming via DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP) to be delivered efficiently over a broadcast channel. This is important in the context of NextGen given that this is all about integrating traditional broadcast with broadband streaming. There are differences over whether this is done in a broadcast or broadband centric way, with ATSC 3.0 tending towards the former, making ROUTE/DASH an obvious fit. The ATSC’s objective is to maintain the primacy of digital terrestrial networks and shoehorn interactive IP transmission onto that.

This approach has clearly succeeded in Brazil, although that decision has also been influenced by the relative timing of standards development and release. While ATSC 3.0 was first implemented not in the USA, but in South Korea as early as 2016, ISDB-T was only finalized in 2023.

Even so, DiBEG (Digital Broadcasting experts Group), the body set up to develop Advanced ISDB-T as the next generation of that standard, had believed it had done enough to address Brazil’s specific needs. In fact, development of Advanced ISDB-T had been optimized towards provision of UltraHD based service on both broadcast and Integrated Broadcast-Broadband for Brazil’s TV 3.0 project, reflecting the importance set on retaining that country as a customer. The eventual rejection has therefore come as a major blow to the ISDB-T movement.

Although it may seem fanciful to depict these contentions between digital TV standards as a battleground, that is how it appears to many of the protagonists. This is rooted in the evolution of DTT around four global versions, the other two being DVB-T in Europe, and DTMB in China.

Of these only ISDB-T and DVB-T have succeeded in gaining major ground outside their original hinterland. DVB-T has fared best of all, having been adopted not just across Europe but also in Russia, India, Australia and almost all of Africa.

Another candidate has emerged in the shape of 5G Broadcast, which seeks to achieve integration by overlaying broadcast and multicast transmission over cellular networks, while enabling broadcast delivery to mobile handsets without needing a SIM card or internet connection. Given its lack of maturity it is not surprising 5G Broadcast was rejected by Brazil, but some major broadcasters are leaning towards it, particularly in Europe.

One is Italy’s RAI, which in 2003 completed a nationwide 5G Broadcast trial as a prelude to possible country-wide integration of the HPHT (High Power High Tower) overlay model with its own digital terrestrial transmission network, as The Broadcast Bridge has described.

Now with adoption of next generation TV coming in many countries there is the prospect of a further changing of the guard, as has just happened in Brazil. This is made all the more likely by a difference in approach between the DVB and ATSC, with the former swinging more towards harmonization of TV and streaming over the internet rather than traditional broadcast networks. Admittedly the actual medium could still be traditional infrastructure, such as DTH satellite, but the emphasis at the transport level is to ensure broadcast quality delivery over IP streaming networks.

This is the idea behind the DVB-I initiative, in combination with DVB-T2 digital terrestrial and most recently 5G Broadcast, which has gained support from a number of European broadcasters, including the BBC. While this approach is more forward thinking than that of the ATSC in the sense that the longer term future does clearly lie with streaming delivery rather than traditional broadcast structures, even if some of the legacy infrastructure is retained, as with the HPHT model, the DVB has lost some ground in the public relations stakes.

For one, it has failed to come up with a new version of its DTT technology billed as third generation or next gen. Its latest is still DVB-T2, as the DVB Project’s outgoing chair Peter MacAvock has admitted. His line is that although DVB-T2 appears to be second generation it has actually continued to evolve by incorporating technologies, such as DVB-I, as well as native IP support.

In this way DVB-T2 is evolving to become an “internet first” technology. By contrast, ATSC 3.0, while claiming to be an IP-only system, still relies on broadcast networks for the transmission at the physical level below that.

Brazil’s TV 3.0 will still therefore be broadcast centric, according to MacAvock, and will need to incorporate an additional layer to accommodate streaming delivery properly in a harmonized platform. The DVB may hope in vain though that Brazil beats a path to its door, having lost out by failing to communicate that it has the best approach to internet migration for broadcasters.

To some extent it is in the label, given that it appears to those not following its developments closely still to be stuck in the second generation. The DVB has itself admitted it needs a fundamental restructuring just to hold onto to its extensive hinterland across Europe, Africa and a large part of Asia Pacific, focused as much on its organization and messaging, as on technology.

Indeed, technically the DVB does seem to be heading in the right direction. ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute), whose writ also runs well beyond its continent of origin, has just published a technical report arising out of collaboration between the DVB Project and 5G-MAG (Media action Group), describing how DVB-I can provide a service layer for any IP-based system. This includes 5G Media Streaming and 5G Broadcast. It is this the DVB hopes will appeal to those countries such as Brazil that have adopted a broadcast centric NextGen TV system, as they seek to reach expanding audiences on mobile devices.

In the event 5G Broadcast looks set effectively to become the next version of the DVB DTT standard, the sequel to DVB-T2. The PSBs (Public Service Broadcasters) in France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland and Austria have agreed that the UHF 470–694 MHz frequency band should be reserved for 5G Broadcast, which they would then migrate towards around DVB-I.

These European countries will doubtless stick with the DVB and adopt 5G Broadcast, but it is less clear which way some of those other DVB territories will go, with the risk that some will opt for ATSC 3.0, as South Korea did after a drawn-out decision process. The DVB’s revamp will be designed to shore up its base, as well as to promote its technologies among areas that have gone for one of the other major digital TV platforms. At least according to MacAvock, Brazil has already adopted some core DVB-T2 technologies for its TV 3.0 technologies, such as next generation video codecs, and DASH with low latency.