Digital Terrestrial Television Broadcasting (DTT) in Mauritius

Together we will explore the world of Digital Terrestrial
Television Broadcasting in Mauritius and we will try to understand what is going on in this medium and what does it implies for us.

First lets look at these various definitions given by Wikipedia

“Digital television(DTV) is the sending and receiving of moving images and sound by discrete (digital) signals, in contrast to the analog signals used by analog TV”.

“Digital Terrestrial Television (DTTV or DTT) is an implementation of digital technology to provide a greater number of channels and/or better quality of picture and sound using aerial broadcasts to a conventional antenna (or aerial) instead of satellite dish or cable connection”

History

· The Digital television was introduced in the late 1990s. Netherlands was the first country in 2006 to switch to Digital Over-the-Air(terrestrial) broadcasting.
· In Mauritius in 1997 the Government has set up a Committee to prepare the introduction of Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) in Mauritius.
· In 2002 MCML (Multi Carrier Mauritius Limited which provides Transmission services) installed a Digital DVB-T(Digital Video Broadcasting-Terrestrial) platform with one digital multiplex and covers about 70% of the island to demonstrate the capabilities and features of DTTB (Digital Terrestrial Television Broadcasting).
· In 2005 the Digital Terrestrial Television channels were officially launched at the M.B.C (Mauritius Broadcasting Corporation) and it offers 6 digital television channels to the Mauritian free of charge. It was the first Public Television Broadcaster of Indian Ocean to broadcast in digital.
· In 2007 a second multiplex was installed covering 100% of the island allowing the people of Mauritius to enjoy 12 television channels broadcast in UHF (Ultra High Frequency) in Mauritius.
· MBC 1, MBC 2 and MBC 3 are analogue and digital simulcast.
· MBC Knowlegde Channel, Movie Channel and Sports Channel are digitals only. The others 9 channels (TV 5 Monde, France 24, B4U, etc) are Satellite pass- through channels and local feeds.
· In 2007 a first Multiplex was installed in Rodrigues as well as in Agalega and since 2008, people of Rodrigues and Agalega can also benefit from the digital television.

In many countries broadcasters are mandated to convert to digital television broadcasting, also known as the digital television (DTV) transition. For example;

· After February 2009, full-power television stations in the USA will broadcast in digital only.
· In Canada, this is schedules to happen in August 2011.
· China is scheduled to switch in 2015
· In Mauritius the complete switch off of Analog to Digital only is scheduled to 2011/2012.

This meant that all analogue broadcasting will stop and Mauritians will have either to buy converter boxes or decoders (Set Top Boxes) to receive the programming on their older analogue TVs, or to buy a digital TV(DTV) set.

Digital television supports different picture formats depending on the size, aspect ratio and interlacing. It can be High-definition television (HDTV) or Standard definition television (SDTV) and these digital sets are nromally used over DTV(Digital Television). In Mauritius, very few households possess High Definition television (HDTV), the households usually possess Standard definition televisions (SDTV) or Analogue televisions.

In some countries like USA technology allows some televisions to receive very High-definition resolution for example at a progressive scan frame rate- known as 1080p60 put in Mauritius we are using the Standard definition resolution of 625 lines. This resolution allows us to save bandwidth ( )



Technical Informations given by MCML on Digital Terrestrial Television Broadcasting in Mauritius

DVB-T network parameters

1	Frequency Band	UHF IV & V
2	FFT mode	8 K
3	Modulation	64-QAM
4	Convolutional code rate	03/04/08
5	Guard interval length	1/32
6	RF Power	10W -250W
7	Network Mode	Multiple Frequency Network (MFN)
8	Video Compression	MPEG 2
9	Relays	20 Transmission Sited
10	Coverage	100.00%

Reception of digital television

There are different ways to receive digital television for example the most common, are digital cable and digital satellite TV company such as Canal Sat Maurice and Parabole Maurice. It can be read on Wikipedia that in some countries reception of TV signals can be done through microwaves, digital MMDS,IPTV (that is via Internet Protocol using DSL or optical line) as well as the reception of TV signals through the open Internet.For example the P2P Internet Television software is commonly used to watch TV on your personal computer.

However in Mauritius we are using one of the oldest means of “programming over-the-air”; that is receiving Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) Channels by using either a special antenna (UHF) connected to the analogue TV and the Set Top Box; that is the “digital-to-analog set-top converter box” or to the Digital television set which already integrated a “built-in a digital tuner”.

It is interesting to note that no use is made of any satellite system for transmission of DTT; broadcasting relies completely on earthbound circuits.


Advantages

· Multi-digital channels can be broadcasted on the TNT
· High-definition in terms of superior quality of images (crystal clear pictures)
· High quality sound
· Easier reception compared to analogue
· Better services from the broadcaster
· Offers a greater number of channels and therefore more programming choices
· Electronic program guides
` Can be viewed on personal computers with possibility of surfing the Internet at the same time


Disadvantages

· Viewers are restricted by whatever channels the antenna picks up.
· Some low income families cannot procure set top boxes, special antennas or digital television sets.
· Sometimes TV sets indicated “no video signal”. This can lead to poor quality of reception through antenna due to either “poor aerial and downlead, aerial pointing in the wrong direction” and changing weather conditions (for e.g when there is too much wind or during cyclonic conditions ).
` Does not operate so well in areas not served by any cable system.


Implications of the transition from Analogue to Digital
➔ TV stations must have the qualified human ressources and equipment to send digital broadcasts. The M.B.C has invest much money in a massive training programme (in-house and overseas) and the acquisition of the latest Digital equipment to be able to be completely digital

“M.B.C GOING DIGITAL”

4 Television Digital Transmission Suites where Beta and DV Tape play out are gradually been replaced by Broadcast Servers and where the Miranda IS3(a flat screen) has replaced the old DFS 500

1 New Television Studio (Studio A) with 7 Digital Cameras (Higher Resolution) HD cameras are beind used but acquiring SONY EX 3 is in the pipeline

10 Non linear Editing Suites (Tapeless editing on AVID NLE :Mojo, Express & Adrenaline)

1 OB (Outside Broadcasting) with 4 Digital Cameras

New UPS Power and New Cables installed

Opens Systems Softwares are being used and Engineers are given the opportunity to develop MBC softwares such as those currently being used : RAMIS (Radio Automation Management Information System), A.I.M.E (Archivage Interactif Multimédia Evolutif) and the TAMIS (Television Automation Management Information System) is been developped actually.

Many necessary measures have been taken for a mass penetration of the Digital Terrestrial television channels in every household like low priced Set Top Box and hire purchase facilities.

The M.B.C is exploring the possibility of a 13th channel. “This depends on compression i.e how the video can be compressed to an acceptable degradation level so that no artifacts are perceived by the eye on reconstituting the signal.

According to Sir David Attenborough :- “We are now in the middle of a broadcasting revolution brought about by developing technology- digitalisation and the sudden proliferation of channels”

References :-
(1) http://mbcradio.tv
(2) http://wikipedia.org/wiki/digital
(3) http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/dtv.htm
(4) http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/digitaltv.html


Articles

Animating us

The Simpsons has reached cult status because it’s really reality TV

There are indie movies, indie music and indie publishers. But because of the way the television business worked — series produced for millions of dollars to reach millions of people — there was never much that you could call indie TV. Until The Simpsons.
I realize that is an absurd claim to make for one of the most popular television shows in history, produced by a mammoth multinational media company (Fox), which has generated billions of dollars in merchandising and licensing revenue. But before Springfield's most famous yellow-skinned residents came to rival ubiquitous corporate mascots like Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny, the Simpsons were an outgrowth of that most indie of art forms, the alternative comic.
Since the late 1970s, Matt Groening had been publishing Life in Hell, a bleakly wry comic about an existentially alienated rabbit named Binky. Veteran producer James L. Brooks asked Groening to adapt the strip as animated shorts in The Tracey Ullman Show, but he instead created a family based loosely on his childhood, representing himself as Bart (an anagram for brat).
When The Simpsons debuted on Dec. 17, 1989, it was an utterly familiar thing on TV: a sitcom about a middle-class family. (Its very first episode was one of TV's hoary fixtures: a Christmas special.) But it quickly became clear that this was no Cosby Show.
Where classic sitcoms were essentially optimistic — in the end, father, mother, doctor, cop and teacher knew best — The Simpsons was set in a world where the authority figures were uniformly ridiculous. Bart's principal was an idiot, his teacher a bitter chain-smoker. His dad, Homer, was an incompetent technician at a nuclear power plant with an evil plutocrat for a boss; his TV idol, Krusty the Clown, a cynical hack peddling dangerous toys. No institution was safe: there was a jaded reverend, a doughnut-gobbling police chief, an ambulance-chasing lawyer and a stoner school-bus driver.
What allowed The Simpsons to cross over from alternative satire to mass hit was its likeable family and the vast world it built around them. Homer, Marge, Lisa, Bart and Maggie were a nuclear family in more ways than one, and not just because of Homer's job: they were the nucleus around which a vast cloud of satellite characters would revolve. As a cartoon, not limited by live actors and realism, The Simpsons had the freedom to go wherever and depict whomever it wanted, and it used this freedom to create a universe.
This meant that where its contemporary Seinfeld was "a show about nothing," The Simpsons was a show about everything. Through insufferably wholesome next-door neighbor Ned Flanders, the show became about religion. Through fatuous local news anchor Kent Brockman, it became about the media. Through Springfield's venal Mayor Quimby, it became about politics.
Above all, The Simpsons was a pop-culture phenomenon that was about pop culture itself. The show internalized the early criticism that it was a bad influence by creating the ultraviolent show-within-a-show Itchy and Scratchy, in which a homicidal mouse tormented a cat. It contained an entire fictional Hollywood: the Schwarzenegger-like action hero Rainier Wolfcastle, the superhero Radioactive Man (whose 1950s TV show was sponsored by Laramie cigarettes) and, of course, the fans, embodied in pudgy, fanatical Comic Book Guy, whose "worst episode ever" pronouncements echoed the show's own demanding critics.
That might explain why a show that was so specifically about America became the most popular TV export worldwide. Whether you lived in Springfield or Springbok, you could understand not just the universality of the family stories but the ubiquitous, disposable mass culture the show satirized.
The Simpsons' triumph is so absolute and its reach so total that it's hard to realize that there was a time when its dense, rapid-fire allusions weren't the lingua franca of comedy, when irreverence wasn't the default mode of popular culture. But its success was both a sea change and, in retrospect, a no-brainer: there is no one thing that unifies people more than the belief that they, like Matt Groening's funny-haired yellow wonders, are misfits. The world's biggest alternative entertainment turned TV inside out, by making outsiders in.
By JAMES PONIEWOZIK

Source:
TIME Magazine
June 29-July 6, 2009
Pg 75