Italy: RAI switching to DVB-T2 HEVC in August
July 12, 2024
From August 28th, as established in the National Service Contract between the Ministry of Business and Made in Italy and RAI – Radiotelevisione italiana (the Italian public broadcaster), a mux of the public broadcaster (Mux B) will switch exclusively to transmissions in the DVB-T2 HEVC standard.
In particular, Rai Storia, Rai Scuola and Rai Radio 2 Visual programmes channels will be broadcast exclusively in this new standard.
Within this mux, Rai 1 HD, Rai 2 HD and Rai 3 HD nationally will also be broadcast in simulcast (in DVB-T2 HEVC) on channels 501, 502 and 503.
The move towards DVB-T2 transmissions is extremely late compared to the forecasts made during the liberation of the 700 MHz band, which took place a couple of years ago.
Marco Rossignoli, president of Aeranti-Corallo (the Italian association representing around 150 local television broadcasters), commented: “At this point, the transition to the new technology can no longer be postponed, in order to allow the local broadcaster to have adequate transmission capacity for broadcasting of its programmes in high definition. To date, in fact, with the current DVB-T/MPEG-4 transmissions, the local television broadcaster has too little radio space to be able to transmit programmes with adequate technical quality. We need to accelerate the transition of the entire Italian television system to the new standard.”