DVB-RCT: A New Standard for Interactive TV

Abstract

Interactive digital TV services are now considered the key element to introduce digital TV services and to encourage customers to invest in new digital TV appliances. Some time ago, the Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) forum, which already produced a harmonized family of technical standards including return channels using telecom networks technologies (PSTN, GSM, and ISDN), decided to engage in the work of defining return channels using the same medium as the broadcast “downstream” one. Thus, the cable and then the satellite platforms have been endowed with their dedicated return channel, and it is now possible to provide the remaining terrestrial platform with a dedicated return channel. The result of this work is called DVB-RCT (Return Channel for Terrestrial system) and is intended to provide standard specification for interactivity in the UHF/VHF bands. Using the newly defined DVB-RCT standard as a companion of the worldwide proven, recognized, and adopted terrestrial DVB system, DVB-T is no longer limited to unidirectional broadcast. It can become a true terrestrial wireless interactive system. Following a general presentation of the DVB-RCT technical specifications, two projects dealing with the future of the DVB-RCT standard are presented in this paper.