Advanced Television

Italy to use DVB-T2 from 2015

April 24, 2012

The Italian government has confirmed the adoption of the DVB-T2 standard for Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) reception equipment, from January 1st 2015. Both stand-alone and integrated decoders will have to be compatible with the DVB-T2 standard, and from July 1st 2015 will become the only ones that can be sold on the Italian market.

The change has become essential as from 2015 the number of DTT frequencies will be reduced from 55 to 34 when a portion of the frequencies will be used for other communications needs such as 4G. In order to continue adding new DTT TV channels, the Italian government has decided to adopt the DVB-T2 standard, which has the advantage of cramming, among other things, up to six channels in HD, compared with two with DVB-T. It also supports ‘Ultra HD’.

Categories: Articles, Broadcast, DTT/DSO, Standards