Starting from September 2024, Rai 1, Rai 2 and Rai 3 (only the national edition) will be broadcast both with traditional digital terrestrial both with DVB-T standard and with the new DVB-T2: “In September we will convert our Multiplex B to DVB-T2”, confirmed Stefano Ciccotti, Rai’s director of Technologies, during the book presentation The television of the future, the prospects of the television market in the digital transitioncreated by the Astrid Foundation.
As is known, the second generation digital terrestrial allows us to make the management of the available frequencies more efficient and also to improve the quality of the service, both on the front video (4K e 8K) both in the offering of functionality. The transition, however, required establishing a series of intermediate stages, since with the definitive transition from DVB-T to DVB-T2 the old televisions become useless, unless an external decoder is purchased. It is clear that millions of people could find themselves in the dark and be deprived of public service television.
Tech Test How the Sony A95K is made and how it performs, one of the only two QD Oled TVs in the world by Emanuele Capone 25 December 2022
The troubled path of the new digital terrestrial
The first step was taken in 2021, when national broadcasts switched to a new encoding (MPEG-4) which rendered all channels in high definition (in HD, that is). The next one transition to DVB-T2 (we explained it here) it was postponed from 30 June 2022 to 1 January 2023 and subsequently from January 2024 to September 2024. Ciccotti underlined that perhaps a little courage was lacking, but it is also true that today, despite the bonuses, there are still millions of families without a compatible television. Last year, Auditel-Censis estimated that 47% of appliances installed in homes would be unsuitable: this is practically around 8.4 million families.
Here is therefore the decision to postpone and above all for Rai di experience a simulcast phasethat is, with old and new signals, so that people are not forced to change television: “We want to verify what we as technicians have theorized for years – declared Ciccotti, recalling the need for comparison with reality – 5G broadcast belongs to broadcasters and can cooperate, but it is made for mobile terminals and therefore television on the move. It’s not made for watch smart TV in 5G because it works on the operators’ frequencies”.
And further advantage of DVB-T2 it should occur in areas where serious interference problems have emerged, such as the many areas of Piedmont and Veneto, including Portogruaro, Treviso, San Donà and Jesolo, where last September hoteliers and viewers reported the impossibility of using Rai channels . The reason, according to the technicians, is due to a growing phenomenon relating to high temperatures and the consequent anomalous signal propagation caused by changes in the refractive index of the atmosphere. In practice, with the abandonment of the frequencies of the 700 MHz band (assigned to the world of telecommunications for 5G) there is a need to recalibrate the power of the signals or install new systems.
In this sense, DVB-T2 could help: “We have made our schemes (of propagation, ed.) on the old models, but it is no longer the Italy it once was, for two years now. There will never be a turning back and the effects that have created discomfort among the population could have been largely mitigated by DVB-T2″, explained Cicchetti.
However, there is nothing technically definitive other than the Rai Service Contractof which a draft is circulating and which would require the technological transition by September.