BT in Eire Dab TV pilot

BT has teamed up with RTE, the Irish national broadcasters, for a trial of digital TV for mobile-phone owners in Dublin using the DAB signal used for digital audio broadcasts in Britain.

UK DAB specialist Radioscape is a partner in the trial, which mirrors the BT Movio service piloted in Oxford last year, and is expected to be offered nationally soon.

The Eire trial will feature two TV and two radio channels. DAB was designed for mobile audio use but can also be used for digital TV.

The main constraint is regulatory rather than technical: in Britain, currently, only a small proportion of the available bandwidth can be put to non-audio use.

But it faces competition from DVB-H, a mobile variant of the DVB-T signal used for terrestrial TV broadcasts in the UK. DAB has an edge in Britain in that the broadcasting infrastructure is already in place.

Related articles:
Philips chips to improve digital TV signals in UK