Irish broadcaster RTÉ has teamed with BT and RadioScape to broadcast live digital TV signals to mobile phones in a technical trial of DAB-IP technology in Dublin.
DAB-IP is one of the broadcast technologies being considered for mobile TV radio services and it has already been trialled by BT in the UK.
“Having worked closely with BT over the recent trial of DAB-IP in the UK, we were able to have the broadcast system in Dublin up and running in four hours,” said John Hall, RadioScape’s CEO.
One of the attractions of DAB-IP is that it can use existing DAB radio infrastructure and it also addresses the network congestion issues associated with some existing mobile TV services and allows an unlimited number of users at any one time to access live digital TV and digital radio via mobile devices.
“The broadcaster infrastructure and frequencies for DAB Radio are already in place in most countries. It is a technology that has been proven in the field to be robust and reliable, and it can be easily extended to deliver video in a spectrum efficient way,” said Hall.
The Irish broadcaster is testing a limited service with two live TV channels (RTÉ One and RTÉ Two) and two live radio channels (RTÉ Radio 1 and RTÉ 2fm) on air via DAB-IP. The trial uses BT Movio, a BT service soon to be available in the UK, to bring live digital TV, DAB digital radio and TV & radio listings to mobile handsets.
Broadcasters only started trialling DAB radio services in Ireland in January.
“We’re excited by the potential of DAB for Radio and RTÉ’s trials to date have been extremely encouraging. Perhaps it’s an indication of the multimedia future that a radio platform is now hosting trials of television in this new format. DAB-IP is an immediate proposition, it uses spectrum that is available now and it works very well,” said JP Coakley, head of operations, RTÉ Radio.