A group of former executives of DVB-T middleware provider, Cabot Communications, has formed a company, called Digital TV Labs, which claims to be the first pan-European DVB-T conformance and testing organization. The company, which is based in the UK city of Bristol, says that, while DVB-T is the fastest-growing European digital TV platform, the fact that there are "a myriad of options" within the DVB standard and "limited European coordination" has resulted in a multiplicity of different national network implementations that is creating a "huge challenge" for digital receiver OEM's. EPG information, channel ordering, interactive services and over-the-air upgrade features vary considerably between European countries, the company says, and, as a result consumer equipment OEM's have to adapt their products to meet disparate national requirements, perform different conformance tests, and then conduct extensive field trials. According to Digital TV Labs, these substantial testing requirements, coupled with a lack of specialist local knowledge, are hindering many OEM's from introducing products quickly across Europe.
Digital TV Labs says that it will provide a "one-stop shop" for any company introducing DVB-T receivers into Europe. The company claims to have extensive knowledge of pan-European DVB-T, a "huge" library of European transmission streams (it says that its transmission stream library includes several, up-to-date recorded transmission streams from each DVB-T country deployment and region), and custom in-house test suites, and says that this allows it to ensure not only specification compliance, but conformance of tested products with "real market conditions." Among other things, it says it will provide low-cost expert field testing through regular pan-European testing tours in a mobile test vehicle. Other services offered by the company include RF, MHEG-5, PSI/SI, EPG, CI, AFD, UI, Teletext, subtitle, conformance, performance, stress and interoperability testing. It says that its tests are super-sets of D-Book, E-book, NorDig and other standards and that they accommodate European variations. It is also providing product specification consultancy services, alongside its pan-European testing services.
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