DVB

Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) refers to the DVB Project and to the standards established by the DVB Project. These standards describe a system for the broadcasting of digital television over all broadcasting media. These are:

• DVB-C, for digital cable television,
• DVB-S and DVB-S2, for digital satellite television,
• DVB-T, for digital terrestrial television,
• DVB-H, for digital terrestrial television to handhelds.
• DVB-SH, for digital satellite television to handhelds.

There are also two complementary standards for digital multipoint video distribution systems; DVB-MS, based on the DVB-S satellite delivery system and DVB-MC,based on the DVB-C cable delivery system.

DVB can be used for Standard Definition TV (SDTV) as well as for High Definition TV (HDTV) with multichannel digital sound and an enhanced teletext version. DVB uses MPEG-2 for the coding of video and sound.

DVB can be watched on an ordinary analogue televison through the use of a so-called set-top-box. This is a receiver which translates the incoming digital signal in a analogue signal format for the ordinary television set. Eventually, the digital receiver will be integrated in the television.

The transmission of the digital video is for all transmission media based on the transmission of MPEG-2 data containers. These containers can carry a flexible combination of MPEG-2 compressed video, audio and data. The container can contain more than one program as well as data services. The data of the different programs are combined in a so-called multiplex. Each container carries Service Information (SI) which gives details about the programmes being broadcast.

The DVB standard encompasses a conditional access sytem. This makes it possible to restrict access to the programs to authorized ("paying") users.