Satellite Tv Service

There has been a lot of interest in television broadcasts to mobile hand-held devices like cell phones, PDA's and Lap Top Computers. This technology would allow for audio and video programming, data, internet, and email to be transmitted over the air or via satellite to these devices. This would certainly make these devices an even more important part of the electronic communication revolution shaking the world today.

As with any new technology there are a number of proposed ways to effectively broadcast, receive and process these various types of information. While the competition between these different methodologies is far from done, there is already one standard that appears like it will be one of the few that survive the inevitable shake-out that goes along with a maturing technology and that is the DVB H Standard.

The DVB H Standard was adopted as an ETSI (European Telecommunications Standard Institute) Standard in November 2004. While this standard (EN 302 304) is only one of many issued by ETSI for this technology, it is, according to EU Commissioner Viviane Reding, the leading contender for becoming the approved standard for the European Union.

One of the things that makes this standard more likely to be accepted world wide as one of the few standards left after the shake-out is that it is an open source standard. This has allowed for a variety of microchip manufacturers to provide chipsets that can be used in devices that will receive these broadcasts. It also makes it easier for multiple equipment manufacturers to use it in their equipment. Both of these will combine to allow the prices for equipment meeting this standard to decline more rapidly than equipment for competing standards.

There are also some technical reasons why this DVB H Standard may be a better standard for the mobile data transmission. High fidelity transmissions require error correction encoding within the transmission. DVB H adds a third layer of error correction coding to the same two layers of coding used by its competitors. This means that there will be fewer instances of data corruption, sharper pictures and less audio distortion using the DVB H Standard than with devices using the competing standards. Fidelity is also increased by the signal modulation techniques used for DVB H transmissions. This difference gives these devices a better signal to noise ratio (about a 3 dB difference) than their competitors which helps to decrease the error rate even further. Power consumption is also less on devices using the DVB H Standard because the signals are transmitted in short, high-speed bursts. This helps to increase battery life.

With these devices just starting to reach the market place in large numbers in Europe and the United States, it is much too early to tell which standards will survive the shakeout that is seen whenever a new electronic technology is introduced. It does seem, however, that the DVB H standard has a large number of things working in its favor. Only time and consumer opinion will tell if it survives.