Joint Technical Committee (JTC) of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) and ETSI Activity Report 2023

Chair: Antonio Arcidiacono, EBU

Responsible for standardization of broadcast systems for television, radio, data and other new services, and for the standardization of programme transmission and receiving equipment.

ETSI plays a leading role in the development of specifications for technologies that are used globally for radio, television, and data broadcasting. The specifications cover services delivered via cable, satellite, and terrestrial transmitters, as well as by the Internet and mobile communication systems. Related topics such as Ultra High Definition (UHD) TV and interactive television are also included.

For many of these technologies, ETSI addresses two aspects: system and equipment specifications; and Harmonised Standards for equipment to be placed on the market in line with European legislation. In addition, for systems that use the radio frequency spectrum, ETSI works with relevant organizations to secure appropriate frequency allocations that are common throughout Europe.

Within ETSI our standardization of broadcast systems, programme transmission and reception equipment is managed by JTC Broadcast – the Joint Technical Committee that brings us together with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC).

This work also sees ETSI collaborating with other organizations in the broadcast domain, including DVB Project, WorldDAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting), DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale), RadioDNS Hybrid Radio, HbbTV (Hybrid broadcast broadband TV) and the 5G-MAG (5G Media Action Group).

In addition to its ‘traditional’ scope of interests (including e.g. DVB, DAB, DRM, AC3/AC4, DTS, TV Anytime), JTC Broadcast develops related standards and technical specifications including High Dynamic Range (HDR), Next Generation Audio, hybrid radio and interactive TV. As a result of this activity, our published broadcasting standards are among the most widely accessed downloads from the ETSI website.

During 2023 JTC accordingly continued to produce and maintain standards and specifications for relevant broadcast platforms and systems.

In June the Joint Technical Committee issued a revision to the Technical Specification TS 103 720 V1.2.1 ‘5G Broadcast System for linear TV and radio services; LTE-based 5G terrestrial broadcast system’. The scope of this update notably includes:

  • Clarifications and updates relating to 3GPP Rel-17 specifications
  • Adding receiver requirements for consistent network planning including requirements on demodulation performance
  • Adding bandwidth information, including 6/7/8 MHz, and broadcast UHF spectrum (based on 3GPP RAN work items)
  • Support of 5GMS over eMBMS with reference to 3GPP TS 26.501 including hybrid use cases
  • Codecs and formats with reference to 5GMS in 3GPP TS 26.511
  • Support for Emergency Alerts

Introduction of the LTE-based 5G terrestrial broadcast system in the UHF band is further facilitated by the decision of the ITU at WRC-23 to retain the broadcasting service as the only primary service in the band 470-694 MHz in Region 1.

Over the summer, the Technical Report TR 103 972 ‘DVB-I service delivery over 5G Systems Deployment Guidelines’, and the Technical Specification TS 104 002 ‘DASH-IF Forensic A/B Watermarking – an interoperable watermarking integration schema’ (carried out under the PAS agreement between ETSI and DASH-IF) were issued. Various other deliverables we also published in 2023, notably:

  • Revision of European Standard EN 300 468 V1.18.1 ‘Specification for Service Information (SI) in DVB systems’; with updates including SI signalling for VVC and AVS3 codecs, VVC subpicture descriptor, DVB-S2Xv2 (beamforming) SI signalling and Satellite access tables, and TM-NIP bootstrap linkage descriptor type.
  • Revision of ETSI Standard ES 201 980 V4.3.1 ‘Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) System Specification’, to add loudness metadata provision and remove certain options from coding parameters for xHE-AAC audio.
  • Revision of Technical Specification TS 102 818 V3.5.1 on Hybrid Digital Radio (DAB, DRM, RadioDNS) ‘XML Specification for Service and Programme Information (SPI)’.
  • Revision to Technical Specification TS 102 371 V3.3.1 Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB); Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) ‘Transportation and Binary Encoding Specification for Service and Programme Information (SPI)’.
  • Revision to Technical Specification TS 102 796 V1.7.1 for Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV, to mainly update web and OTT standards; support for integration with DVB-I (TS 103 770) - any voice assistant supported by the terminal device or any accessibility features supported by the terminal device.

Meanwhile work progressed on several other deliverables, notably:

  • Development of a new Technical Specification TS 103 876, describing a Native IP end-to-end broadcast system based on existing DVB standards.
  • Development of a new Technical Specification TS 103 973 on Coded Multisource Media Format (CMMF) for Content Distribution and Delivery.
  • Development of a new Technical Specification TS 103 998 on DASH-IF Content Steering (carried out under the PAS agreement between ETSI and DASH-IF).
  • Revision of European Standard 301 545-2 - Second Generation DVB Interactive Satellite System (DVB-RCS2); Part 2: Lower Layers for Satellite standard. This update adds signalling for non-geosynchronous satellites (non-GSO) and for forward links using Annex E (superframes) of DVB-S2X used by multibeam satellites, for interference suppression, pre-coding and beam-hopping. Additional signalling relevant for beam-hopping systems has also been added.

See the full list of JTC BROADCAST Work Items currently in development here.