Jean-Pierre Lacotte, Thomson, who is ‘Monsieur HDTV’ in France explained the French plan for HDTV (praised in the Panel Session yesterday for its clarity). In France there has been a fantastic coming together of all parts of the media industry as a kind of ‘France Inc’ to make HDTV a success. Jean Pierre Chairs the French HDTV platform.
But in France – sacre bleu – they will not use DVB-T2 as in the UK, by jove, but keep with DVB-T for their DTT HDTV. The reason is because they want/need to introduce it now rather than wait for an unknown time for DVB-T2 receivers.
In France, all new DTT STBs and TVsets have MPEG4 and HDTV capability. The migration has already started. HDTV is already available on satellite and IPTV. The HD DTT multiplexes will normally have 3 HDTV channels. Audio will be (only) DD+ from this summer.
Is it a coincidence that the countries moving the fastest with HDTV, like France and UK, have the strongest national HDTV inter-company coordination groups?
Many congratulations to them!
P.S Jean Pierre, I will tell no one that you were heavily involved in HD MAC too.
11/03/2009 at 10:39
seems to me that the plethora of audio codecs in France is much more confusing than the T1/T2 of HD format debate!!
11/03/2009 at 10:40
sorry – typo. I ment to say T1/T2 or HD format debate
11/03/2009 at 10:55
I’m concerned about the SI signalling services as Type 0×01, meaning that all legacy receivers will store and try and decode the service, even if they cannot decode MPEG-4. In the UK we have decided to broadcast the service type 0×19 for HD (can’t remember the SD number of the top of my head) to allow the receivers to filter services if they wish.
How are they dealing with legacy receivers in France?
11/03/2009 at 11:37
On Chris comment about audio codecs in France…I understood that there WAS chaos but from this summer there will be only one type used, DD+.
11/03/2009 at 12:09
On Simon’s comments, it’s a real shame that there are differences – sometimes completely unnecessary – in basic technical issues such as SI signaling between different European countries. Why can’t the “implementation groups” co-ordinate?