VIDEO OVER DAB

SADIBA members recently had the opportunity to exchange ideas and witness IP broadcasts over DAB when a Harris Corporation delegation visited South Africa.  Digital Broadcasting specialists Bernhard Baumgartner and Dr Glodina Connan shared some information on Digital Video Broadcasting for Terrestrial (DVB-T)  as well as Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) technologies, the trends in the network infrastructure and design approaches to synchronised networks or Single frequency Networks. 

SADIBA is proud to have supported the demonstrations and appreciates the contribution made by Sentech in facilitating access to the L-Band transmitter as SentechTower. 

Harris delegates provided an IP (Internet Protocol) inserter that was interfaced to the L-Band DAB transmitter at SentechTower. For the duration of the test demonstration this system broadcast IP over T-DAB.  Imbedded in the IP stream was a MPEG-4 video clip.   Although the encoding technology for inserting live video is readily available, the demonstration made use of a stored MPEG-4 video clip merely to reduce the number of modules and therefore the logistics associated with the demonstration.

The Video was displayed on two receivers capable of decoding IP over T-DAB.  The innovative integrated PDA and DAB receiver displayed the clip on the PDA screen.  The second solution was based on a receiver interfaced with a Laptop PC that used standard software on the PC to play the received video clip.