Blurring the lines: DVB-I brings the future of television to today’s viewers

Mediaset’s Simone Murgia explaining DVB-I technology

Digital Video Broadcasting-Internet (DVB-I) is an open standard aimed at revolutionising television distribution by simultaneously delivering the same traditional TV channels via both typical broadcast methods – through terrestrial digital transmitter networks – and via the internet.

“We can not only imagine a future but also experience today real access to a full range of TV channels, independent of the reception method, be it terrestrial, satellite, cable, or IP via a broadband internet connection,” explains Simone Murgia, head of technological innovation at Mediaset Group, which launched a market trial of DVB-I last year.

Key features of DVB-I

DVB-I strives to offer the best possible viewing experience, independent of the delivery method, whether IP and/or broadcast. It is designed to be adaptable and scalable, ensuring its relevance in the ever-evolving media landscape.

Widespread adoption of DVB-I will require collaboration among broadcasters, internet service providers, device manufacturers and regulatory bodies. But if this happens, it has the potential to enhance the television industry by blurring the lines between traditional broadcasting and internet-based content.

The standard aims to provide a higher quality, more personalised, interactive and engaging viewing experience while offering new opportunities for content creators and advertisers.

Alberto Bruno, deputy director of strategic marketing at Mediaset, states: “We are dealing with a technological standard that integrates the TV channel list, in the case of Mediaset, Rete4, Canale5, Italia1 and Il20, combining the typical terrestrial digital distribution resource with the internet.

“Mediaset is a pioneer in Europe in this sense. Our experimentation is not conducted in closed environments like laboratories, as in Germany, England, and France, but in the real world on Italian territory and on about 100,000 televisions.”

“The initial and fundamental driving motivation that led us to DVB-I is the ability to provide the highest possible quality only to those who can effectively benefit from it”

DVB-I ensures that the user’s home TV set functions normally and is controlled through the typical list with the same channels that can be received simultaneously via both DVB-T and the internet, in a manner transparent to the user.

This is done with configurable priority logic, allowing the broadcaster to pre-determine which distribution system to prioritise for the same signal, DVB-T or IP.

Mediaset, after starting with the first phase of internal testing in 2022, went live with a public market trial in May 2023.

This system is now available on the market through enabled Vestel televisions capable of receiving and managing DVB-I signals. Mediaset is working with other smart TV manufacturers since a simple operating system upgrade, downloadable like an app, can make a smart TV compatible with this standard.

Bruno continues: “In this second phase, the experimentation aims to expand the pool of available televisions as much as possible, which, through a simple operating system update, could make the vast majority of smart TVs already on the market compatible.”

For the user

The Mediaset TV channels currently considered experimental in Full HD 1080p are 504, 505, 506 and 520. For the user, the driving motivation for using this service is that it eliminates the typical bandwidth limitations of terrestrial digital.

With DVB-I, the viewing quality can be superior, and it would be entirely possible to follow or even anticipate any future evolution in quality and standards, significantly increasing both the quality of viewing and the number of adjacent services.

A transparent technology

Mediaset has so far preferred to deliver channels tuned to numbers 504, 505, 506 and 520 in IP mode. Therefore, if the TV can receive a good bandwidth, it chooses to produce images from the internet in 1080p and disregards the broadcast signal in terrestrial digital.

If, however, it detects issues with the digital packets delivered via the internet, the TV switches immediately and transparently to the broadcast reception signal on the same LCN tuning channel number, as per the national official numbering.

Murgia says: “The initial and fundamental driving motivation that led us to DVB-I is the ability to provide the highest possible quality only to those who can effectively benefit from it. That is, it is useless and uneconomical to deliver high quality, for example, 4K, to everyone by delivering such a high-quality signal even to those who do not have a TV capable of appreciating the improvements. With DVB-I, we can provide the highest quality to those with receivers capable of displaying it while continuing to provide excellent and universal service to all other viewers whose TVs continue to display the terrestrial digital signal.”

Bruno clarifies: “The important starting point to consider was that broadcast distribution resources are intrinsically limited in typical transmission capacity and cannot grow. DVB-I easily overcomes this limitation. This extension allows for maintaining a competitive linear offering compared to VOD, where quality is already available and scalable.”

Murgia: “The advantages offered by DVB-I are indeed numerous”

DVB-I is primarily born as a standard for linear TV via the internet, making sport an ideal application field: just think of football and goals seen without delay.

In classic distribution methods such as unicast via the internet, there are typically common delays between broadcast, satellite, terrestrial digital and IP. So, even without considering potential buffering issues typical of an overloaded network, the classic CDNs used by VOD propose – nonetheless – sports events with a certain delay.

The trial currently underway with Mediaset has been implemented to enable real-world experimentation that does not conflict with broadcast but complements it. Indeed, it not only guarantees a very high viewing quality but also ensures no delay between IP and broadcast.

Everything is perfectly in sync and viewing the same event on two side-by-side TVs for a test, one in broadcast reception mode and one in IP reception, is perfectly simultaneous – sometimes the IP signal even had to be slowed down.

Murgia continues: “The advantages offered by DVB-I are indeed numerous, starting with not having a quality constraint, especially in areas where quality makes a difference, for example, due to broadband capacity and the spread of large high-quality 4K HDR TVs.

“Moreover, it does not impose a priority to decide whether to distribute a channel in IP or broadcast mode. It allows us to serve everyone and offer the best available to those who can appreciate it. This avoids waste by implementing optimal distribution efficiency with evident scale savings (avoiding distributing bandwidth to those who do not need it).

“Another crucial theme is that today the television product must have all the characteristics of broadcast, above all, the synchronisation that DVB-I guarantees. From a technological point of view, DVB-I requires the use of equipment capable of ensuring low latency encoding (far from trivial and straightforward), so we had to bring the low latency experience to the TVs where real-time viewing makes sense.”

No constraints

Just as there are virtually no bandwidth constraints, there are also no channel constraints either, except for respecting the LCN terrestrial digital numbering regulated by law. So, even if this idea has not yet been experimented with, DVB-I could allow the creation of a series of temporary and concurrent channels for exclusive IP distribution.

These could be especially useful in a sports event that takes place simultaneously in multiple fields or areas, where the user can choose which event to follow simply by changing the channel on the remote.

Bruno continues: “All the experiments we have implemented as Mediaset today are entirely compliant with the regulations, and the learning curve for the viewer using a TV in DVB-I mode is zero.

“The experiment with temporary multichannel will only be possible when and if the legislator intervenes to regulate the number of channels usable for this purpose and their placement in the standard channel list. Furthermore, DVB-I allows viewing terrestrial digital channels even on TVs not connected to an external antenna, for example, in a room without an antenna socket where only the home wi-fi reaches.

“Another advantage of DVB-I as an open and available standard for everyone is respecting all other technologies, as it acts as a complementary service to broadcast without any intention of cannibalising other markets or offerings.”

Murgia summarises: “DVB-I serves to identify the best distribution resource for the user at that moment. The already existing world of apps for interactivity, typical of HbbTV, is entirely compatible with DVB-I and can leverage it for mutual benefit. Today, to grow in broadcasting, we need to hybridise: we must ensure the highest delivery guarantee of that content in a linear mode, and on top of this, we can add the multicamera service. Until yesterday, this was only possible on a broadcast signal, while this technology allows adding multicamera and interactivity even to channels distributed via IP with great quality.”

Technological variants

The technology required by DVB-I and its application branches are not complex as no intervention is required on the transmitter side or existing transmission networks. The installed TVs already have the triple front-end, satellite, terrestrial digital and IP, so, to date, only the standard for switching transparently between these distribution systems was missing. The software standard for DVB-I is open to all and the only technological requirement is the presence of an efficient and latency-free encoding system.

Bruno concludes: “We have already done a lot to promote this new technology, but there is still one crucial step to be taken: for the regulator, Agcom, to embrace this technology and validate it among the feasible paths in coexistence with the already existing regulatory regime, thus ensuring common standardisation against possible Wild West-type differentiation. Everything must be managed within the existing channel numbering in a regulated and orderly manner.”