Last week, participants from Arab Radio and TV public service broadcasting organizations, along with representatives from EBU and ASBU gathered together in Tunis to attend a week-long event focused on technology.
Presentations and discussions relating to production and distribution technologies were given by senior engineers from EBU and EBU Member organizations as well as updates from ASBU and their Member organizations. Hot topics included technology updates on networked media, metadata, the future of audio, beyond HDTV and integrated media production strategies. Updates were also given on DVB-T2 SFN network planning, satellite interference, digital radio, HbbTV and spectrum issues related to the preparation of WRC-15.
The Arab countries reported on the status of production technologies. In particular, they reported that digitization is effectively taking place, although with some difficulties in television digital production due to equipment availability and interoperability issues. The need for more IT and network engineers was also highlighted.
Satellite broadcasting is the main delivery means in Arab countries. With this in mind, discussions on distribution, including spectrum, focused on the issue of interference on satellite reception. The need for Arab countries to preserve the use of the C-Band (3.4-4.2 GHz) in the context of the upcoming ITU WRC-15 was also discussed.
DTT implementation is progressing in Arab countries but slowly. It was reported that the analogue TV switch off in many Arab countries will not take place in June 2015, as requested in ITU agreements. It was noted that a large majority of Arab countries are against a co-primary allocation to the mobile service of the band 470-694 MHz at ITU WRC-15.
Beyond the topics of the presentations, the way the presentations were delivered is worth highlighting as more than half of them were done through remote conferencing with screen sharing, live audio and video on both sides. This allowed the opportunity for more presentations to be given by speakers located in Geneva, the United States and Sweden. The method is not new but proved useful and reliable as well as time and cost efficient.
The event was organized by EBU and hosted by ASBU, 17-18 October 2014. The idea for such event came to light a few years ago and is supported by the Eurovision Academy.