The DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting) organization, promoter of standards for digital television, has recently announced the DVB-NIP specification. It has been designed for satellite and terrestrial IP-based transmission.

The specification has been approved by the DVB board of directors after a year of technical work carried out by about thirteen members from different companies representing all fields related to the multimedia content broadcasting industry.

The system is based on DVB-S2X or DVB-T2 broadcast carriers and does not rely on the MPEG-2 transport stream, “which has been the basis of DVB broadcasting systems until now,” according to the consortium. “The raison d’être of DVB-NIP is to use the efficiency of broadcast networks for large-scale content delivery to modern IP devices, fully integrating broadcast technologies with those used in broadband networks.”

Representatives of the consortium continued: “Operators can use the same broadcast signal to cover both professional applications (CDN caches, content distribution to towers, hotspots, etc.) and consumer applications (DTH to native IP TVs, broadcasting to IP devices via gateway functionality in the home).”

The association also highlighted the potential cost savings and new revenue potential that the transition to native IP delivery can bring. Primarily the ability to use a single unified OTT headend to address all end devices.

“Unification is also possible across IP-based client devices, digital rights management solutions and content formats,” added DVB. “New revenues can be derived from reaching a broader set of devices and selling higher value advertising space based on targeting and newly available analytics.”