In praise of digital terrestrial television

Respondents in the openDemocracy debate have exposed a frightening number of political agendas. So, may a simple engineer try to correct some of the opinions masquerading as facts about digital terrestrial television (DTT)?

I know less than zero about the reasons for the British Government’s support for DTT but I do know that there were plenty of companies bidding for licences in 1997, including BSkyB, so their Chief Executives must have seen possibilities (presumably commercial ones) or else DTT would have been stillborn.

At the time, everyone was taken with the idea that DTT should seek to compete with cable and satellite. It is only with the advantage of hindsight that the whole idea of competing head–on with two established pay–TV platforms seems a little foolhardy. Indeed, almost every pay–TV operator in Europe is in trouble. Even BSkyB, held up as an example to the rest, has been heavily bankrolled by its parent, NewsCorp.

UK DTT was the first such implementation in the world and posed significant technical challenges because of the scarcity of spectrum.

As one of the significant proportion of the population who are not great television watchers, who are mainly happy with the five terrestrial analogue services but find more choice attractive, I am an advocate of DTT. (I think it is fair to say, too, that I am a little frightened about giving my name and address to a pay–TV operator whose avowed aim is to increase average revenue per unit (ARPU) from £300 to £500 per annum).

Many figures have been quoted for coverage but the ones I use and believe are these:

• Whilst some DTT multiplexes can be received by over 80 per cent of the population, currently 68 per cent can get all six multiplexes. Many of these need a new aerial to receive transmissions that are outside their existing aerial groups.
• DTT transmissions are lower than they need to be because the planners were over–cautious about the risk of causing interference to existing analogue viewers. Unlike the launch of Channel 5, there were virtually no cases of interference and it is now generally believed that signals can be raised by 5 or 6 dB (four times the power) with no problem.
• Unfortunately such a change will cost a lot of money and investment is hard to come by during the current recession. Therefore, the plan is to double transmitter power, which can be easily and cheaply achieved by running main and standby transmitters in parallel. Some limited extra changes, so–called ‘equalisation’ changes, are affordable and can make a significant improvement in a number of areas of particular difficulty in the West Midlands, the lowlands of Scotland and in the south–east of England.
• As direct competition with satellite and cable has been proven wrong, the new plan is to offer fewer services, approximately twenty–four, and to change the transmission mode to give a more robust signal.
• The combination of these changes would give coverage to some 82 per cent of households, with a little under 60 per cent able to receive on their existing aerials.

Terrestrial is the only digital platform in the UK that has a genuinely open market in receivers and set–top boxes. Thus, any manufacturer that wants to can enter the market with products without a contract from the multiplex operator. In a democracy debate, this is an important principle, which gives consumers the benefit of unfettered competition. It is also this competition that allows one of the multiplex operators to go bust without the rest of the services collapsing as well.

If you think this is idealistic twaddle, you should appreciate that Pace launched their digital video adaptor (DVA) on the market almost simultaneously with ITV Digital going under, and still managed to sell out of the entire manufacture of 100,000 boxes within a few months. Others have followed and are appreciating rising sales even before the re–launch of the platform. So both manufacturers and consumers are putting their money where their mouths are.

All new ventures start with the encumbrance of history. But if we were to take a clean sheet of paper and ask what DTT could do that the other platforms could not, or could only do wastefully, we would see that DTT has unique advantages over satellite in terms of regional and local television and portable televisions around the house, and soon in terms of mobile terminals.

I am writing this in Amsterdam where, at the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) Conference and Exhibition, the potential for this new use of media is being realised. Soon, the personal digital recorder will have hours of your preferred programmes from the free channels waiting for you whenever you want to watch. The bus you catch in the morning will show the latest news and weather summaries interspersed with adverts for the commercial premises you are passing.

The bottom line is that there are an estimated 75 million analogue TVs and VCRs in the UK today. At best, some 10 million of these have digital set–top boxes attached. There is still a lot to play for and, I suggest, it is too soon to write off DTT. Methinks David Elstein does ‘complain too much.’