Jim Higgins (Saorview)
As Ireland’s free-to-air DTT (digital terrestrial television) platform, Saorview remains popular among Irish viewers. It is received in some 36% of TV households*, either alone or in combination with UK satellite and DTT, and commercial OTT services. Saorview is operated by the national public service broadcaster RTÉ and features a mix of channels from RTÉ, Virgin Media Television, TG4 (like RTÉ, an EBU Member) and Sky. Saorview operates in a horizontal device market; viewers purchase receivers and installation services from retail outlets.
Saorview over internet
We recognize that viewing trends are changing, with increased viewing over IP and large-scale availability of smart TVs. Viewers have a broad choice of offerings beyond the linear experience. Part of the challenge for Saorview is to retain the interest and imagination of our viewers, and to attract new audiences to the platform. In addition, there is a trend towards more apartment dwelling and home rental, which often precludes installation of a DTT aerial; we regularly hear from viewers who “just want to get Saorview over the internet”.
We are challenged to retain and grow our audience share, and to take our existing audiences with us as we migrate towards an IP/hybrid future for free television. We plan to develop a next- generation offering for Saorview audiences that addresses these challenges and provides additional benefits to free TV viewers. As we do this, we want to reach as wide a range of TV households as possible at launch. And we want to offer features including catch-up viewing, programme restart and availability of players like the RTÉ Player within the familiar EPG (electronic programme guide) environment.
Open standards
We see DVB-I as offering many of these benefits. And if combined with HbbTV, we could deliver further benefits including an enhanced user experience and targeted advertising in the linear schedule. DVB-I also helps address some of the main challenges facing public service media around prominence and findability and permits content discovery in out-of-home environments such as on mobile phones and in-car entertainment systems.
The ‘open standard’ nature of DVB-I makes it an attractive technology. Ireland is a relatively small market in European and global terms, which means that a country-specific solution is not practical to achieve, and so we want to be smart followers, maintaining compatibility with developments in other European trials of DVB-I.
We have built a proof of concept for the purpose of evaluating the potential of DVB-I and are continuing to develop it following its showing on the DVB Project’s booth at IBC2024 in Amsterdam. Subject to approval we hope to launch a small-scale trial in early 2025.
A number of stages remain in the development of a Saorview next-generation offering. We need to engage with regulators, our viewers, and channel and content partners. Engagement with TV set manufacturers in the roll-out of a DVB-I based offering is crucial to the success of its eventual adoption among Irish TV households. As members of the EBU’s TV Platforms Group, we were happy to meet with several manufacturer representatives at IBC2024 to discuss the roll-out of DVB-I in Ireland and other markets.
What is DVB-I?
DVB-I is a standardized way to signal and discover television services, whether they are delivered over broadband or broadcast. Based on HTTPS and XML, DVB-I allows services to be presented in a unified manner on any connected device – from TV sets to personal consumer devices. See: https://dvb-i.tv
This article first appeared in the December 2024 issue of tech-i magazine.