USA tests DVB-T2

A giant 373 meter high terrestrial tower, standing on Television Hill in Maryland which covers the Baltimore-Washington DC region switched to Europe’s DVB-T2 (OFDM) digital TV transmission for a few hours in the early hours of March 27, Advanced Television reports.

The 800+ kW tower beamed out using an experimental licence issued by the FCC to Sinclair Broadcasting’s WNUV-TV station as part of a study to gauge whether DVB-T2 could be the USA’s ‘next generation’ transmission system (the so-called ATSC v3.0).

The results were excellent, reported Sinclair’s VP for Advanced Technology Mark Aitken. “The configuration we operated gave us additional data band-width yielding 24.92 Mbps [some] 30 per cent more than standard ATSC—with a [carrier-to-noise ratio] of 15.1 dB—same as ATSC—with an [modulation error ratio] of 33.5 dB, and shoulders well within specs at -53dB or better at the output of the system,” Aitken said.

“We were running and receiving HD programming. For the record, it was received over-the-air with a USB T2 receiver,” reported trade magazine TV Technology.