On 4/6, the Ministry of Communications (MCom) published in the Official Gazette (DOU) the decree that establishes the guidelines for the evolution of the Brazilian Digital Terrestrial Television System, among them, the creation of a Working Group (WG) responsible for studies on the regulation of TV 3.0 in Brazil. Initially, the team will have until 12/31/2024 to present the result, and there may be extensions.

The WG will be coordinated by MCom, with the participation of representatives from the National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel), entities representing the broadcasting sector and the Forum of the Brazilian Digital Terrestrial Television System (Forum SBTVD), and members appointed by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MCTI) and the Ministry of Finance. 

Regulation of TV 3.0
The decree establishes that TV 3.0 must contain:

•    better audiovisual quality than the first generation of SBTVD-T;

• fixed reception, with external and internal antenna, and mobile;

• integration between content transmitted by the broadcasting service and the Internet;

• application-based user interface;

• content segmentation according to viewers' geographical location;
•    customization of content according to viewer preferences;

• optimized use of the radio frequency spectrum for the sound and image broadcasting service and ancillary services; and

• new ways of accessing cultural, educational, artistic and informative content.

RNP participation
Since 2016, Brazil has started a gradual and safe process of switching off analogue transmissions, an action that seeks to ensure that no one is left without access to open terrestrial TV and that has been very successful, becoming a world reference. Thinking about this and also the need for evolution for the survival of open terrestrial TV in the medium and long term, the SBTVD Forum started working on the next generation of television in Brazil, TV 3.0.

RNP was summoned by MCom and joined the third phase of the project coordinated by the SBTVD Forum, providing support to research groups from six Brazilian universities, responsible for ten goals set by about 70 researchers - 52 of them already hired and working since 4/1 - to carry out research that will result in inputs for the “construction” of TV 3.0.

“There were many discussions with the Ministry of Communications and later with RNP for this project. We started, in parallel, to elaborate the norms of the technologies that were selected and, now, we begin this stage that uses this funding from MCom, through RNP and that involves tests in the physical layer (laboratory and field tests), research and development in the areas of application transport and coding layers, video quality tests and, also, development of system demonstrations”, says Luiz Fausto, coordinator of the Technical Module of the SBTVD Forum. 

On 3/23, the kick-off meeting of this phase of the project was held with all the researchers, to discuss how the work will be conducted and the points of intersection between the different challenges of the project.

“RNP actively participated in the organization of these and many other research groups during the discussions on the Brazilian Digital TV standard, by coordinating the CTICs, where many of these researchers and laboratories were formed. It is great to see, 15 years later, the legacy of this work, with these groups in full activity and to be able to collaborate again. Our mission in this final phase of the project is again to collaborate for the formation of new research groups that advance in proposing applications of this technology to solve social problems, mainly in education”, explains Adriano Adoryan, responsible for the project on the RNP side.

RNP is also acquiring the necessary equipment, including imports, which since February have been delivered to research groups at universities. The expectation is that the new standard will be demonstrated in August 2024, at the Society of Television Engineering (SET) Congress.

Learn more about the research groups and their challenges on the project page on the SBTVD Forum website!