digital tv

2 Articles

The Days Of Broadcast Digital TV Could Be Numbered

August 25, 2026 by 60 Comments

When the analog TV signals were turned off in most places around fifteen years ago, their replacement took the form of a set of digital multiplexes. ATSC for North America, and DVB-T for Europe and other places. This would deliver a multi-channel broadcasting solution for the future, and this would be how those not on a cable would consume their telly. It’s a surprise then to find that some governments are already looking at turning off digital TV broadcasting, with the UK in particular wanting to put a date on the switch-off of 2032.

It’s been no secret for many years that linear broadcast TV is being overtaken by streaming services, and this move projected to come at the end of the transmitting contract was always likely to come eventually. Even with increasingly few younger people watching traditional TV though, it still comes as a bit of a shock that it’s happening so soon. The replacement will be an online service for which initially a set-top-box will be required. We’re guessing there will be a storm of protest, but since it’s still quite a few years away and broadband coverage is now near-universal, there’s a good chance it will peter out as the time approaches.

Aside from the end of analog TV, we’ve seen a steady decline in AM and Long Wave transmission across Europe. What makes this surprising then is that instead of being a legacy analogue system, the one facing the turn-off is the future-proof replacement, and one that still sees plenty of use at that. A major shift in consumer electronic technology is taking place, but will anyone notice it?

Header: Carlos Adampol Galindo, CC BY-SA 2.0.

Untangling The Maze Of Digital TV Upgrades

May 24, 2022 by 24 Comments

When we all shifted our television broadcasts to digital, for a moment it looked as though we might have had to upgrade our sets only once and a set-top box would be a thing of the past. In Europe that meant the DVB-T standard, whose two-decade reign is slowly passing to DVB-T2 for higher definition and more channels. All of this might seem simple but for the DVB-T2 standard being a transport layer alone without a specified codec. Thus the first generation of DVB-T2 equipment uses MPEG4 or H.264, while for some countries the most recent broadcasts use HEVC, or H.265. [CyB3rn0id] is there to guide us through the resulting mess, and along the way produce a nifty upgrade that integrates a set-top box on the back of an older DVB-T set.

Simply bolting a set-top box to a TV is not the greatest of hacks, however this one takes matters a little further with a 3D printed bracket and an extension which brings the box’s IR receiver out to the front of the TV on a piece of prototyping board. Along with a laptop power supply plumbed directly into the TV, it gives new life into a set which might otherwise have been headed for landfill.

As long-time readers will know, we quite like a TV retrofit here at Hackaday.