ISDB-T International
[1][2] It is similar to ISDB-T, except it utilizes the H.264 video codec rather than MPEG-2, and replaces BML with Ginga—a middleware supporting Nested Context Language (NCL) and Java-based interactive TV applications.
Since 1994 a group composed of technicians from Brazilian Society for Television Engineering (SET) and Brazilian Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters (ABERT) has been analyzing existing digital TV standards (American ATSC, European DVB-T and Japanese ISDB-T) and its technical aspects but the discussion become a robust study only in 1998.
From 1998 to 2000, the ABERT and SET group, supported by Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie developed a very complete study based on several tests considering not only technical characteristics of each standard but also signal quality, both indoor and outdoor.
[citation needed] The results of the "Brazilian digital television tests" showed the insufficient quality for indoor reception presented by ATSC (that is a very important parameter because 47% of television sets in Brazil use only an internal antenna) and, between DVB-T and ISDB-T, the last one presented superior performance in indoor reception and flexibility to access digital services and TV programs through non-mobile, mobile or portable receivers with impressive quality.
[5] In parallel in 1998, the Brazilian Ministry of Communication ordered the National Telecommunication Agency to carry on studies to select and implement a DTV standard in Brazil.
The SBTVD program was deployed on November 26, 2003, by Presidential Act # 4.901, focusing the creation of a reference model for national terrestrial digital TV in Brazil.
[6] The National Telecommunications Agency (ANATEL) was charged by the Brazilian Ministry of Communications to lead this work with the technical support of CPqD, and the contributions of 10 other Brazilian ministries, the National Institute for Information Technology (ITI), 25 organizations related to the matter (broadcast professionals, broadcast companies, TV program producers, etc.
The RFPs strongly reinforced the creation of research networks where the studies could be carried in a decentralized manner by several institutes working together.
Some months after Presidential Act number 5.820, in November 2006, the SBTVD Forum was created to lead and coordinate technical discussions about the standard, to create all related documentation (in conjunction with ABNT (Associação Brasileira de Normas Técnicas; Brazilian Association for Technical Standards)) and to plan further developments.
At their showroom in São Paulo, two Full HD LCD sets were shown: one with a built-in tuner and another connected to a prototype set-top box.
[citation needed] The signal was a test reel from Rede Globo, broadcast at 1080i (the standard does not define 1080p) consisting of short clips from soap operas, talk shows, soccer games from recent years and footage of the Brazilian Carnival in Rio de Janeiro along with some scenic views.
By January 2008, the system had also launched in these other Brazilian cities: Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Goiânia, Porto Alegre, Curitiba, Campinas, Cuiabá, Salvador, Florianópolis, Vitória, Uberlândia, São José do Rio Preto, Teresina, Santos, Brasília, Campo Grande, Fortaleza, Recife, João Pessoa, Sorocaba, Mogi das Cruzes, Ribeirão Preto, Manaus, Belém, Joinville, Aracaju, Londrina, São Luís, Araraquara and Natal.
[10] A new push in set-top box and DTV sets sales was expected with the final specification of Ginga middleware that will allow interactive use of TV.
[12] By May 2009 a 42 inch LCD TV full HD (1920×1080) with built-in digital TV tuner and special characteristics such as double presentation rate (120 Hz) and exceptional contrast (50.000:1) was being sold for R$3,600.00 (~US$1,800.00) in São Paulo City, a very impressive price reduction for such a quality product, and other basic devices present even lower prices.
This, associated with a rapid drop in prices of LCD and LED-backlit TVs quickly led to a more widespread usage of DTV.
TV Cultura, a public television station from the state of São Paulo, obtained special authorization (for educational purposes only) and is currently using this feature to broadcast four different video programs.
Besides the HDTV and the one-segment (handheld) streams, an additional archive program (Multicultura) and the Virtual University channel (UNIVESP) have been on air since August 2009.
That idea was to be presented to the Brazilian Government in the WiMAX Forum in June 2009, in the hope of creating an international standard for the return channel.
Brazil and Japan are presenting the benefits of SBTVD/ISDB-Tb standard to Guatemala, Cuba, Belize, Mozambique, Tanzania, Malawi, Thailand, and some SADC countries.
[24][60][61][62][63] Additionally, Brazil and Japan are trying to present the benefits of SBTVD/ISDB-Tb to Colombia and Panama which have initially chosen the European standard as of January 2011 and Honduras and El Salvador who have initially chosen the US-American standard as of December 2010. International Telecommunication Union (ITU) — a United Nations' regulatory agency for telecommunication and information technology questions — has certified on April 29, 2009, the module Ginga-NCL and the language NCL/Lua as the first international recommendation for interactive multimedia environments for Digital TV and IPTV—Recommendation H.761.
[65] NCL/Lua and Ginga-NCL were developed by the TeleMidia Laboratory of the Informatics Department at Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), a Brazilian university.
[66][67][68] Additionally, in October 2009, ITU has defined officially SBTVD as a subsystem for ISBD-T, developing 2 new recommendations: a) Modulation: BST-OFDM (Band Segmented Transmission-Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing).
The ISDB system can also work based in cable or satellite transmission (ISDB-C and ISDB-S) using appropriate frequency band, but these standards are outside the scope of this article.
[33] The SBTVD Forum closed an agreement with the Brazilian Government for the adoption of the Japanese standard EEW or EWS in June 2011.
