4G Wireless Video Communications

10

AVC/H.264 Application – Digital TV

10.1 Introduction

Economically, digital TV is by far the most successful application of the digital video compression standards. It is also one of the main applications targeted by 4G Wireless systems. Since the mid 1990s, when TV began the transition from analog to digital, the number of channels over which digital TV services are distributed has increased significantly. Today those channels include Satellite, Cable, Terrestrial and Telephone networks as well as storage media such as DVD. The 4G wireless network is the latest addition to that list. The success of 4G networks may depend largely on the success they have in delivering digital video services such as digital TV. An end-to-end digital TV system uses multiple devices, such as encoders, decoders and receivers, designed, manufactured and deployed by several different companies. The ability to interoperate among those multiple devices is critical. Therefore, the standards for digital audio and video compression and the carriage of compressed bitstreams and related data play an important role in a digital TV system. They satisfy the critical need for interoperability. However, at the same time, there is also a great need and desire to have flexibility so as to be able to adapt to the varying requirements of different digital TV services – such as Video on Demand (VoD), free but commercial supported TV, broadcast or multicast TV and unicast based IPTV – and to adapt to the different characteristics ...