It is my pleasure to announce that, according to the tweets & news, Turkish Radio & Television Corporation, the public broadcaster of Turkey, starts DVB-T2 4K trials in Ankara.  It is quite interesting as there is still no DTT network in Turkey. TRT 4K is the only channel on DTT trial.  It is broadcasted on 56. channel of UHF band. As far as I know it is one of the first DTT 4K trials all over Europe.  TRT 4K will broadcast the openning, quarter, semi & final matches of the European Football Championship. 

I have to admit that I have missed the recent update of the sub-act about the DTT in Turkey. Actually the update is somehow out of date: 27 October 2015.  According to this update the format of the DTT in Turkey is set to be DVB-T2 HEVC. It was declared as to be DVB-T2 MPEG4, in 2013.  So with the latest update of the sub-act, Turkey is going to be the first country in Europe to have a DVB-T2 HEVC network.  Some argue that to choose HEVC, rather than MPEG4 is a wrong decision, as the prices of the receivers with HEVC are still higher, comparing with the devices with MPEG4. Actually, this statement was true in 2014, but I believe it is not valid anymore. The consumer electronics equipment prices decrease dramatically. Nowadays one can easily find the UHDTVs in any market, so it will not be that hard to find DVB-T2 with HEVC.  Also, Korea, the land of Samsung & LG, has shown that it is possible to send UHD over DTT. So, I believe Samsung & LG...

I have been using LinkedIn frequently. I post some updates on DTT and digital radio transition in Turkey. I found out that there are not enough source of information on these subjects. So, although it is extra work for me, I try to post my comments on these in English also.  Recently Mr. Esat ÇIPLAK, gave a speech on DTT transition in Turkey. He is one of the members of Supreme Council of Radio & Television in Turkey, namely RTÜK. There are nine members of RTÜK. Mr. ÇIPLAK claims that there is no need to build a new DTT network as there are very little percentage left watching analog terrestrial television. According to Mr. ÇIPLAK, even in Europe percentage of population watching television via DTT is decreasing. As you well know, Turkey has not yet build DTT. So, Mr. ÇIPLAK claims that the UHF band should be released to mobile operators. Mobile operators will use the frequency band more efficient.  I posted a comment on these in my blog in Turkish. Thinking of ...

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 quite a while since my last post. Unfortunately reason for this is not me. After three major election in two years time, I hope that some progress will happen. The only news to announce is that some changes have been made in the Act of RTUK. With these changes RTUK has the right to organise a new tender for DTT frequencies. In the digital radio side things are more complicated. FM frequencies have not tendered yet. FM broadcasters are waiting for a FM frequency tender, which will cause new problems. There are more than 100, yes hundred, FM radio stations in İstanbul. After a tender nearly half of these will loose their frequency. DAB/DRM battle is continuing in which DAB seems to be more lucky.

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...

DigiTAG, which is established to promote digital terrestrial television broadcasting, will organize a  workshop   in Istanbul on 14 and 15 November 2013 .   This event, which will take place at the Radisson Blue, is extremely important.   There are several reasons for the importance of course: When we look at the  members  of DigiTAG we see broadcasters, network operators (such as Anten AS in Turkey), manufacturers and regulatory / supervisory institutions. In short, we are talking about an organization formed by all actors of the DTT (digital terrestrial television) world. A workshop organized by this structure, will gather the most important names of the sector. Under normal conditions, the names that will not come together easily, will give presentation in Istanbul  with the call of DigiTAG. Digital terrestrial television in many countries in Europe, has become a fact of life. Analog switch off has been made by most of the...

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...

In Turkey, 3 different types of DVB-T2 licensees are given. According to the coverage of the signal these licensees are national, regional and local. National and regional licensees are given with tenders now it is time for local ones.  There are 81 cities in Turkey, 73 of which will have local DTT broadcasters after T3 (DVB-T2 Local) Licence tender . It is understood from the announcement of Supreme Council, there will be maximum 7 T3 licensees per site. When we look at the attendees of the tender we can easily see that in many sites, there are less than 7 attendees. The minimum price for a T3 licence changes from site to site. In İstanbul minimum is 300.000 TL, in Tunceli and Bayburt it is 30.000 TL. This huge difference comes from the differences in potential advertisement revenue.  In İstanbul, there are 15 attendees, 7 of which will get the licence. In Ağrı, Amasya, Artvin, Bartın, Batman, Bayburt, Bitlis, Bolu, Burdur, Çankırı, Hakkari, Kar...

First of all I would like to mention that you can be sure that what you read in this blog is not copied from somewhere else. They are personally written by me. I am working as an R & D Engineer in Turkey. After graduated from electrical & electronics engineering department in 1995 I am working in television industry since 1998. I am blogging since 2004. I wrote 950+ posts , 125+ of which are technical . I am blogging in Turkish. You can read them using online translator of google, keeping in mind that online tools are not so  powerful in translating from Turkish. This is my first post in English. I hope to be a reference site for the television technology of Turkey. Television market in Turkey differs from other European countries in some aspects. For example in Turkey nearly 70 % of households receive television from satellite. Cable, digital & analog, is just 8 %. Digital terrestrial television (DTT) is not yet started. DTT is planned to start with DVB-T2. ...