By Owen D. Kurtin

The role that Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) by Internet Protocol (IP) is likely to play in the satellite industry has been a constant topic of industry discussion. We now speak about DVB and IPTV the way we spoke about broadband in 2002. Is the fuss justified? Probably.

DVB is an open standard set for transmission of digital audio and video television signals by satellite, terrestrial wireless, cable or other landline platforms that uses the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG)-2 packet compression standard to allow high-density data transmission at relatively low bandwidth usage. DVB also supports encryption, multiple data streams and allows attachment of metadata. It also copes with video’s innate quirks: Video is a high-bandwidth application and a "bursty" one; a video stream with a lot of activity in the picture necessarily requires more bandwidth than does a still picture of an unchanging landscape. When the picture changes rapidly from low activity to high activity (when the dozing lion, for example, jumps up to pursue a limping wildebeest), the bandwidth needs to change with it, placing demands on compression technology.

Bandwidth economy is important for operators and customers of satellite transponder capacity. In data-switched IP networks, data is transmitted in packets consisting of bytes of data that, unlike analog, circuit-switched transmissions, can be broken up by network routing equipment and coherently reassembled at the transmission destination point to maximize efficient use of the available bandwidth. Packet-switched networks can operate this way because each packet contains both a header with addressing information, or where the packet is to go and how it is to be reassembled; and a payload containing the message itself. From the network’s point of view, however, the content and application of the payload is irrelevant and transparent. That is true whether the network is satellite or terrestrial wireless or landline. For this reason, IP networks not only make more efficient use of available bandwidth than do circuit-switched networks, but they permit different uses and advanced applications of available bandwidth and interconnection between different network platforms as well.

The key is the IP. More than any single application, IP itself is probably DVB’s killer application. Just as IP is taking over voice telecommunications, forcing facilities- based incumbent carriers to switch over to compete with Voice-over-IP providers like Vonage and Skype, the technology is becoming the dominant video streaming protocol. The platform interoperability and content and application transparency offered by IP is the real potential of DVB. The development of IP-based video service and applications promises to be transformative for business, individual and government use in ways not immediately apparent.

One useful way to think of it is by comparing DVDs with VHS cassette tapes. The DVD’s ability to support multiple language tracks while the same picture is playing, different language subtitles that can be turned on or off at the viewer’s command and optional view expository and marginal material (alternative and deleted scenes, director’s and actors’ commentaries on individual scenes as they play) are all potential IPTV features as broadcast by DVB. All those are things we never knew we wanted or needed when we had VHS tapes, but we recognize their value now and new content and applications always are being developed. One example: Although there is some doubt about the utility of videoconferencing by DVB because of latency as an irritant in two-way conversation, DVB’s ability to attach and transmit documents, slide shows and other material and view them in split or pop-up or insert screens during the main conference feed sounds too impressive to remain untapped.

IP also means that any broadband-enabled computer can receive DVB feeds and terrestrial wireless and landline platforms will be able to interconnect relatively effortlessly with satellite DVB transmissions, perhaps ending the question of whether satellite can compete with terrestrial once and for all. (It is true that DVB by satellite, known as DVB- S, and its coming second generation, DVB-S2, and DVB by cable, broadcast television and mobile devices use different modulation methods for technical reasons). Look for the rapid development of mixed satellite-terrestrial networks with on-demand or ad hoc uplink and downlink paths depending on the current content provider, broadcaster, customer, end user, location, bandwidth requirements and other parameters.

Owen D. Kurtin is a partner in the New York office of law firm Brown Raysman Millstein Felder & Steiner LLP and a member of the firm’s Technology, Media & Communications and Corporate Departments. He may be reached at +1.212.895.2000 or by e-mail at [email protected].