DVB-S and DVB-C were ratified in 1994. DVB-T was ratified in early 1997. The first commercial DVB-T broadcasts were performed by the
United Kingdom's
Digital TV Group in late 1998. In 2003, Germany was the first country to completely stop broadcasting analogue TV signals. Most European countries are fully covered by digital television and many have switched off
PAL/
SECAM services. DVB standards are widely used across Europe and have also been adopted in countries including Australia, South Africa, and India. They are also used for cable and satellite broadcasting in most Asian, African, and many South American countries. Some have chosen ISDB-T instead of DVB-T, and a few (United States, Canada, Mexico, and South Korea) have chosen ATSC instead of DVB-T.
Africa Kenya DVB-T broadcasts were launched by the
President of Kenya,
Mwai Kibaki on 15 November 1998. Broadcasts are using
H.264, with the
University of Nairobi supplying the decoders.
Kenya has also been broadcasting DVB-H since July 2006, available on selected
Nokia and
ZTE handsets on the
Safaricom and other GSM networks.
Madagascar Since 1998, the pay TV operator Blueline launched a DVB-T service branded BluelineTV. It supplies both smart cards and set-top-boxes.
South Africa Since 1995, the pay TV operator
DStv used the DVB-S standard to broadcast its services. In 1998, it started a DVB over IP service, and in 2006, it started DStv mobile using the DVB-H standard. In late 1998, the South African cabinet endorsed a decision by a
Southern African Development Community (SADC) task team to adopt the DVB-T2 standard.
Asia Hong Kong In Hong Kong, several cable TV operators such as
TVB Pay Vision and
Cable TV have already started using DVB-S or DVB-C. The government, however, has adopted the
DMB-T/H standard, developed in
mainland China, for its digital terrestrial broadcasting services which has started since 31 December 2007.
Iran DVB-H on 15 March 2006 and DVB-T on 15 November 1998 H.264/AAC broadcasting started in
Tehran by the
IRIB. DVB-T broadcasting is now widely available in other cities such as
Isfahan,
Mashhad,
Shiraz,
Qom,
Tabriz, and
Rasht as well.
Israel DVB-T broadcasts using
H.264 commenced in Israel on 15 November 1998 with the broadcast trial, and the full broadcast began on 1 April 1999. Analog broadcasts were switched off on 17 October 2007. During 2002, DVB-T broadcasts became widely available in most of Israel, and an EPG was added to the broadcasts.
Japan With the exception of
SKY PerfecTV!, Japan uses different formats in all areas (
ISDB), which are, however, quite similar to their DVB counterparts. SkyPerfect is a satellite provider using DVB on its 124 and 128 degrees east satellites. Its satellite at 110 degrees east does not use DVB, however.
Malaysia In Malaysia, a new pay television station
MiTV began service in September 1998 using
DVB-IPTV technology, while lone satellite programming provider
ASTRO has been transmitting in DVB-S since its inception in 1995. Free-to-air DVB-T trials began in late 1998 with a simulcast of both TV1 and TV2 plus a new channel called RTM3/RTMi. In April 1999, RTM announced that the outcome of the test was favourable and that it expected DVB-T to go public by the end of 1999. However, the system did not go public as planned. As of 2000, the trial digital line-up has expanded to include a music television channel called
Muzik Aktif, and a sports channel called Arena, with a news channel called Berita Aktif planned for inclusion in the extended trials soon. Also, high definition trials were performed during the Sydney Olympics and the outcome was also favourable. It was announced that the system would go public in 2001. In 2001, MiTV closed down, changed its name to U-Television and announced that it was changing to scrambled DVB-T upon relaunch instead of the
DVB-IPTV system used prior to shutting down. However, RTM's digital network again did not go public, although around this time TVs that are first-generation DVB-T capable went on sale. The government has since announced that they will be deploying DVB-T2 instead in stages starting in 2009 and analog shutoff has been delayed to October 2012.
Philippines In the Philippines,
DVB-S and
DVB-S2 are the two broadcast standards currently used by satellite companies, while
DVB-C is also used by some cable companies. The government adopted
DVB-T in November 1998 for digital terrestrial broadcasting but a year later, it considered other standards to replace DVB-T. The country has chosen the
ISDB-T system instead of
DVB-T in December 2003.
Taiwan In Taiwan, some digital cable television systems use DVB-C in 1995, though most customers still use analogue NTSC cable television. The government planned adopting DVB-T in 1998. However, the country have launched the Singaporean DVB-T system in 2002. Public Television Service (PTS) and Formosan TV provide high definition television. The former has the channel HiHD; the latter uses its HD channel for broadcasting MLB baseball.
Europe In many European countries the legacy DVB-T system has been replaced or is being replaced by DVB-T2. For example the Czech Republic completed its switch to DVB-T2 in 2009; Finland is planning full DVB-T2 deployment by 2009; France operates DVB-T2 for HD terrestrial; the Netherlands uses DVB-T2 commercially; Italy uses DVB-T2 for UHD terrestrial TV (Rai Mux B) and DVB-T with H264 encoding for every other mux; and Switzerland has ended its analogue and legacy DVB-T services and moved away from DVB-T. According to the DVB Project / European Broadcasting Union database, DVB-T and/or DVB-T2 has been implemented in 147 countries worldwide.
Cyprus Cyprus uses DVB-T with MPEG-4 encoding. Analogue transmission stopped on 17 October 2007 for all channels except
CyBC 1.
Denmark In Denmark, DVB-T replaced the analog transmission system for TV on 17 October 2007. Danish national digital TV transmission has been outsourced to the company Boxer TV A/S, acting as gatekeeper organization for terrestrial TV transmission in Denmark. However, there are still several free channels from
DR.
Finland DVB-T transmissions were launched on 15 November 1998. The analogue networks continued alongside the digital ones until 1 January 2007, when they were shut down nationwide. Before the analogue switchoff, the terrestrial network had three multiplexes: MUX A, MUX B and MUX C. MUX A contained the channels of the public broadcaster
Yleisradio and MUX B was shared between the two commercial broadcasters:
MTV3 and
Nelonen. MUX C contained channels of various other broadcasters. After the analogue closedown, a fourth multiplex named MUX E was launched. All of the
Yleisradio (YLE) channels are broadcast free-to-air, likewise a handful of commercial ones including
MTV3,
Nelonen,
Subtv,
Jim,
Nelonen Sport,
Liv,
FOX,
TV5 Finland,
AVA and
Kutonen. There are also several pay channels sold by
PlusTV.
Italy In Italy, DVB-S started in 1995 and the final analogue broadcasts were terminated in 2005. The switch-off from analogue terrestrial network to DVB-T started on 17 October 2007. Analogue broadcast ended on 4 July 2012 after nearly four years of transition in phases.
Netherlands In the Netherlands, DVB-S broadcasting started on 1 July 1995, satellite provider MultiChoice (now
CanalDigitaal) switched off the analogue service shortly after on 18 August 1995. DVB-T broadcasting started November 1998, and terrestrial analog broadcasting was switched off March 2005. It was initially marketed by
Digitenne but later by
KPN. Multiplex 1 contains the
NPO 1,
NPO 2 and
NPO 3 national TV channels, and a regional channel. Multiplexes 2~5 have the other encrypted commercial and international channels. Multiplex 1 also broadcasts the radio channels Radio 1, Radio 2, 3 FM, Radio 4, Radio 5, Radio 6, Concertzender, FunX and also a regional channel. As of June 2009, the Dutch DVB-T service had 29 TV channels and 20 radio channels (including free to air channels). DVB-T2 will be introduced during 2009/2010.
Norway In Norway, DVB-T broadcasting is marketed under RiksTV (encrypted pay channels) and
NRK (unencrypted public channels). DVB-T broadcasting via the terrestrial network began in November 1998, and has subsequently been rolled out one part of the country at a time. The Norwegian implementation of DVB-T is different from most others, as it uses
H.264 with
HE-AAC audio encoding, while most other countries have adapted the less recent
MPEG-2 standard. Notably most DVB software for PC has problems with this, though in late 1998 compatible software was released, like
DVBViewer using the
libfaad2 library.
Sony has released several HDTVs (Bravia W3000, X3000, X3500, E4000, V4500, W4000, W4500, X4500) that support Norway's DVB-T implementation without use of a separate
set-top box, and Sagem ITD91 HD, Grundig DTR 8720 STBs are others.
Poland Currently, Poland uses the DVB-T2 standard with HEVC encoding in 2009. Analogue broadcast switch-off started on 17 October 2007 and was completed on 24 October 2012.
Portugal Portugal follows the DVB-T implementation, using H.264 with AAC audio encoding. It has been live since 15 November 1998 and the switch-off date for all analog signals was on 17 October 2007.
Romania Romania started digital terrestrial broadcasting in 1998 but it was virtually unknown by many people in Romania due to the lack of content, cable TV and satellite TV being far more popular, however, it was the first platform to deliver HD content. Today, Romania is using DVB-T2 as terrestrial standard, but also DVB-S/S2, and DVB-C which is extremely popular. The only analogue broadcast remains on cable. Romania adopted the DVB-T2 standard in 2009 after a series of tests with mpeg2, mpeg4 on DVB-T, and has today fully implemented DVB-T2. DVB-C, which was introduced in late 1998, still remains with mpeg2 on SD content and mpeg4 on HD content. DVB-S (introduced in 1995 focus sat being the first such platform) is used in basic packages with standard definition content, while DVB-S2 set top boxes are provided for both SD and HD content.
Russia Fully switched to digital in 2007, Russia uses the DVB-T2 standard for broadcasting 2 channel packs with about ten main national radio and TV channels (
Channel One,
Rossiya 1/2/K/24,
NTV,
Radio Mayak,
Radio Rossii etc in 2009.
Spain Quiero TV started digital terrestrial broadcasting in 1999 as
pay television. The platform closed three years later after gaining 200,000 subscribers. The frequencies used by Quiero TV were used from 2004 to simulcast
free-to-air analogue broadcast as DVB-T, under the name "TDT". The service started with 20 free-to-air national TV channels as well as numerous regional and local channels. Analogue broadcast ended on 2009 after getting 100% digital coverage. Some of the analogue frequencies were used to increase the number of channels and simulcast some of them in HD. Since February 14, 2023, all channels will be required to broadcast exclusively in HD. Frequencies of SD channels will be used to simulcast some of them in 4K using DVB-T2.
United Kingdom In the UK DVB-T has been adopted for broadcast of standard definition terrestrial programming, as well as a single DVB-T2 multiplex for high-definition programming. The UK terminated all analogue terrestrial broadcasts by the end of 2012. The vast majority of channels are available
free-to-air through the
Freeview service. DVB-T was also used for the now-defunct
ONDigital/ITV Digital and
Top Up TV service. All satellite programming (some of which is available free-to-air via
Freesat or
free-to-view via
Freesat from Sky; the remainder requires a subscription to
Sky), is broadcast using either DVB-S or DVB-S2. Subscription-based cable television from
Virgin Media uses DVB-C.
North America In
North America,
DVB-S is often used in encoding and
video compression of digital satellite communications alongside
Hughes DSS. Unlike
Motorola's
DigiCipher 2 standard, DVB has a wider adoption in terms of the number of manufacturers of receivers. Terrestrial digital television broadcasts in Canada, Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, and the United States use ATSC encoding with
8VSB modulation instead of DVB-T with
COFDM. Television newsgathering links from mobile vans to central receive points (often on mountaintops or tall buildings) use DVB-T with COFDM in the 2 GHz frequency band.
Oceania Australia In Australia, DVB broadcasting is marketed under the
Freeview brand name, and more recently 'Freeview Plus', denoting the integration of online
HbbTV and EPG in certain DVB devices. Regular broadcasts began in November 1998 using MPEG 2 video and MPEG 1 audio in SD and HD. Changes to broadcasting rules have enabled broadcasters to offer multi-channeling, prompting broadcasters to use H.264 video with MPEG 1 or AAC audio encoding for some secondary channels. Specifications for HD channels now differ depending on the broadcaster. ABC, Nine and Ten use 1920x1080i MPEG 4 video with
Dolby Digital audio. Seven and SBS use 1440x1080i MPEG 2 video with Dolby Digital and MPEG 1 respectively.
New Zealand In New Zealand, DVB broadcasting is marketed under the
Freeview brand name. SD
MPEG-2 DVB-S broadcasts via satellite began on 2 May 1995 and DVB-T (terrestrial) broadcasts began November 1998 broadcasting in HD H.264 video with HE-AAC audio.
South America Colombia Since 1998,
Colombia has adopted as a public policy the decision to migrate from the analog television implemented in 1929 to
Digital Terrestrial Television (
DVB-T2). This measure allows the viewers access to the open television (
OTA) of public and private channels, with video quality in
HD. As planned, analogue television broadcasts will end in 2012. ==DVB compliant products==