Fernando Bittencourt, TV Globo?s head of engineering and coordinator of the Abert/SET group, announced Tuesday, April 9, at the NAB show in Las Vegas that a pilot station will be set up in São Paulo in the second half of this year to conduct a range of experiments in digital terrestrial television. The Abert/SET group was set up in 1994 as an initiative of Abert, the national broadcasters association, and SET, the society of television engineers, to analyze and test international DTV standards. The pilot station will be fully functional and run by broadcasters with the support of Anatel. Companies interested in testing applications, products, programs, business models, techniques, technologies or anything to do with DTV will be free to use the pilot station provided they join the project.
The DTV station will be owned and operated by a nonprofit entity with professional management and will not be subordinated to commercial business interests. Anatel will issue a special license for the station to begin operating in July. If the DTV standard has been chosen by then, the pilot station will use it. Otherwise all tests will be carried out using the three standards under discussion.
Any company that wants to test a project in the DTV environment can join, from manufacturers to advertisers, telcos, commercial broadcasters, universities etc. Each participant will cover the cost of its own project and share the basic infrastructure. Trials may be open or closed, in the sense that the results will be published or kept confidential.
Digital TV
