There is a saying in Turkish. If I try to translate it, I guess it is something like this: "Everyone describes an elephand depending on where he/she grabs." I believe there is also one in English which has similiar meaning, I would be glad if you can share that in the comments. I have been working in broadcast since 1998 and worked on digital terrestrial broadcast since 2003. So, the my main interest was DTT again. But this time not DAB+ / DRM+ nor DVB-T2. My main point of interest was 5G Broadcast.  There was actually one single company which was demonstrating 5G broadcast, namely Rohde & Schwarz. They were doing the demonstration with the receivers which have chipsets from Qualcomm. So this demonstration was in a way the demo of R&S and Qualcomm. But I had the chance to talk to other big transmitter companies. The advance of IBC is that you can find top level executives to talk with on the subjects that you are interested in. So these guys told me that even though t...

Actually this post might be a little shorter then usual, here goes: Nothing new was happening regarding the progress of DTT (Digital Terrestrial Television) in Turkey, suprisingly this changed, a presenter of Turk Telekom attended the event in Istanbul.   And thank God that Mr. Umut (Udo) Keten attended this event organized by the Chamber of Electrical Engineers (EMO). He started explaining the view of Turk Telekom (the largest telco in Turkey) and how they see DTT. And what a suprise this was, not many expected this interest with DTT and we definately would like to hear more from Turk Telekom’s point of view regarding this ‘sensitive’ matter. I figured I should at least try to summarize the presentation but it would only mislead or misconceive some idea’s to my readers.   However rest assured, I will try to get in touch with a senior officer at Turk Telekom, this in turn to squeeze out an e-interview on their position of the DTT process in Turkey. While you...

This post will be a short covarage of the potential problems regarding the DTT launch in Turkey: It is quite obvious for anyone that the ASO in Turkey, should have been completed till now. This lateness make the things some how more problematic. Broadcast sector actually are not using the terrestrial transmitters any more. TV reception is heavily, nearly fully depends on FTA satellite, for which each & every broadcaster has license. So, for the broadcasters, the DTT is not needed with this model:  Pay for the licence, ---MONEY Build the Network,   ---MONEY Pay for the Transmitter + Multiplex operator company,  ---MONEY also pay for the annual fee of frequency usage. ---MONEY Well this is a all give model actually :) There is not even one income, with building DTT.  Or just forget about the DTT, just close down analog terrestrial transmitters and save money and leave the full UHF band to the mobile networks. Well, to be honest the...

You probably know that WRC 2015, is going to start in 2 weeks. There will be debate on the use of 470-694 MHz. The European public broadcasters, and the organization of the public broadcasters, namely European Broadcasting Union, EBU are trying to secure the rest of UHF band for terrestrial broadcasting.  For the ones out of broadcasting, the frequency band can be thought as the road for the automobiles. When the road is wider, you can put more cars on it. If you squeeze the cars, then it is OK for you to live with a narrower road. That's exactly what happened when the terrestrial television went through the digital transmission. The size of the cars, the bandwidth needed for a TV channel, has went down. Hence, the whole UHF band for analogue TV transmission is more then enough. On the other hand, there was a increasing demand of bandwidth in mobile networks. This demand, caused the release of 800 MHz band to mobile.  With the developments in the encoding techn...

It is my honor to post an e-interview with the executive director of the DVB Project Office, Dr. Peter Siebert. I personally appreciate for his quick response and clear answers. I hope that his view will help the TV sector in Turkey, in the journey of digitization of terrestrial television.   1. As you may well know Turkey has not yet built a DTT network. On the journey of DTT, the standards changed from DVB-T with MPEG2 to DVB-T2 with MPEG4. Nowadays especially after the Germany's decision of building a DTT network with DVB-T2 HEVC, do you think that Turkey should also think about choosing DVB-T2 with HEVC as the standard for DTT. Answer: The introduction of a new television system is always a major step and involves significant investment. Therefore the implemented technologies should be as much future proof as possible. By now HEVC is a mature technology and a wide range of decoding devices are available. Therefore, I would recommend that Turkey, like Ger...

It was this February when I first met with Dr. Peter Siebert in Kuala Lumpur at the conferance of Asia Pasific Broadcasting Union (ABU). He is the chief executive officer of the well-known, Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) Project Office.   I am honored to announce that Dr. Siebert accepted my e-interview offer. I have sent him questions and wait for his answers. I asked him 4 questions, 3 of which are about the digital terrestrial television. The last one is about the usage of DVB-T2 Lite profile for the digital radio. The post of the interview may take time, as in July & August many is on vacation.  Keep watching and do not hesitate to contact me with your comments.

I have been writing on Digital Terrestrial Television, in Turkish , for a while. I have been blogging since 2004 and have posted more then 1200, 80+ are on DTT. It seems that I have to keep posting. This time I will try something different. I will post in English. Hope this post will help the progress of DTT.  FTA Satellite is the market leader First of all I want to discuss about the need of DTT. Because as the DTT progress fails, people had to choose other ways of TV reception, mainly DTH satellite. Nowadays if you ignore the presence of digital cable and IPTV, which of both add up just 10%, people in Turkey are watching the TV signal which they receive over satellite. As I have posted on previously the FTA is another dominant of the TV market in Turkey. PayTV is just 27%, if we take the total number of houses as 20M, which may be more than 20M. People tend to think this FTA offers will last forever. So they believe that there is no need to build a new DTT network, which w...

It has been a long time, since my last post on DTT. After the workshop organised by DigiTAG, I attended a local workshop organised by Chamber of Electrical Engineers in Ankara, on 21 of December 2013. I was one of the speakers of the session, on behalf of Chamber of Electrical Engineers. Workshop had two sessions, one of which was focused to the technical and the other to the economical & political issues of DTT.  You can find the video streams of the sessions from the following link, but they are in Turkish as you may think.  http://www.emo.org.tr/genel/bizden_detay.php?kod=100708&tipi=43&sube=0 http://www.emo.org.tr/genel/bizden_detay.php?kod=100709&tipi=43&sube=0 I will try to summaries the discussions in a few paragraphs. By doing that I hope to keep my readers updated with the latest information on DTT in Turkey, which my blog is all about: Whole process of DTT in Turkey is suspended because of the problems in tenders for DTT li...

It was a successful workshop in the sense that there were more than 160 delegates all over the Europe. Half of the delegates were from Turkey, which is understandable. As far as I remember, this was the first event of DigiTAG in Turkey. When we look at the members of DigiTAG, we see no one from Turkey. I hope that the event will be a beginning of understanding the importance of being a member of DigiTAG also.  I will write a more detailed coverage of the event. But as a first impressions, I believe these were the results of the event, regarding the DTT journey of Turkey: All parties in the DTT process, namely broadcasters, supreme council, equipment manufacturers are unhappy with the current uncertainty of the process. If we remember the last developments, supreme council has finished the tender process. There was a claim to court and court decided to suspend the licences tender for the national broadcasters. This suspend affect whole DTT process, becau...

It was my first time in that north of Europe. First of all I should thank to Levira, for their hospitality. They were amazing. The conference, the party, the organization were all fabulous. Hope to attend their events in future.  You can find my presentation slides in this post. Below each slide I will try to write some comments, hopefully will be explanatory.   Turkey is a big country with a population above 75 millions. Free to air satellite is dominant way of TV reception. Digital terrestrial network is not built yet. Plan is to switch off the analogue terrestrial by March 2015. When we look at the numbers, it can easily be seen that number of households receiving TV through analogue terrestrial decreases steadily. Actually it was almost equal in 2006, when the first attempts for DTT started. payTV is immature in Turkey. There is a lot to do regarding payTV. Numbers are not exact. I could not find the exact numbers of subscribers...

It is surprising to learn that Court has decided to suspend the tenders for national digital terrestrial television. Supreme Council, made an announcement stating this decision. It is not yet clear what will happen next. I mean, national licensees are key point in the DTT transition process. Because the share holders of the antenna company should have the national terrestrial licensee. Another interesting point is that according to the law number 6112, RTUK can not organize a new tender for national broadcaster as in the law it is stated that all tender processes should be completed within 2 years time. What will happen next is the main question in minds. I believe that Parliament will make a change in the law and give permission to RTUK to organize an new tender. But, Parliament is closed now. So, this will take time.  Actually, whole process will take time. It was planned to start DTT broadcast in Ankara on 1'st of November. It seems that we should wait a little bit more. ...

Hope that it is interesting to read my insights about DTT in Turkey. It is my pleasure to announce that I will be presenting about DTT in Turkey at Levira's Digital Broadcasting event in Tallinn. It will be my first time in Tallinn and actually in that north part of Europe. In my presentation I will mention the important dates about DTT, which comes from the broadcasting act 6112. I will also discuss the factors which affect the success of ASO.  As you may well know that Turkey is some what late in DTT process. It may be argued that this gives Turkey an important advantage to choose DVB-T2 and start DTT directly with DVB-T2. But the TV market in Turkey is different than all other CEE countries. There are only 2 DTH Pay TV operators, one cable and one IPTV operator. Nearly 70 % of households receive TV through satellite. Cable, is not an important alternative. Hence, DTT may give the people an interesting alternative. Some argue that comparing with 1000 channels with sate...