DVB Approves Specification For Future UHDTV Services including MPEG-H Audio

In the world of broadcast standards, a few countries depend upon their own specific set of terrestrial broadcast technologies, such as the United States, Japan, Brazil, and China. The rest of the world uses DVB standards. Now that everyone is preparing the next generation of standards to support 4K UHDTV, the news that the new DVB UHD-1 Phase 2 was approved is a big deal. More important for the audio community is the news that MPEG-H is part of that standard.

The International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) 2015 was widely agreed to be extremely successful. According to the promoters, the best yet (but they always say that). Measured in terms of conference content and quality of the event, we have to agree. It wasn’t the best for product announcements but it was certainly exciting for the technology previews.

The 2015 International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) will take place once again in Amsterdam. The conference from 10-14 September 2015 and the exhibition 11-15 September 2015. The 2015 show will be an important platform for new technology demonstrations in immersive audio. British semi-conductor ARM is awarded the International Honor for Excellence 2015.

This article discusses the plan for the new MPEG-H Audio standard, a real-time 3-D audio encoder system with applications for broadcast and streaming distribution, developed in large part by the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany, and recently finalized and submitted as an ISO/MPEG standard.

Fraunhofer’s Audio & Multimedia division has been extremely active in the latest industry shows, promoting the MPEG-H Interactive and Immersive TV Audio standard. Demonstrations at NAB 2015, in cooperation with Qualcomm and Technicolor, showcased the new audio system for ATSC 3.0 and Internet streaming in a complete broadcast chain showing live sports and music productions.