A survey on MPEG-4 standard and digital television deployment
Zoran S. Bojkovic, Bojan M. Bakmaz · WSEAS TRANSACTIONS on COMMUNICATIONS archive · 2010
MPEG-4 standard has been developed to support a wide range of multimedia applications. It provides users a new level of interaction with visual contents, including techniques to view, access and manipulate objects rather than pixels with great error robustness at a wide range of bitrates. The object-based representation paradigm make MPEG-4 a standard that may find application from low bitrate personal mobile communications to high quality studio production. One topic common to most applications is the need for supporting interactivity with different kind of data. A prime example is the introduction of Digital TV (DTV) instead of analog with obvious direct benefit such as improved quality and reliability. DTV delivers interference and distortion free audio and video signals, while achieving much higher spectrum efficiency than analog television. Agreements for the DTV transition are being implemented with different emphasis in various countries, depending on network and station arrangements, government regulations, and market conditions. DTV increasingly impacts broadcasters, consumers and many related industries. The DTV systems that are now available worldwide, not only deliver crystal-clear picture, and high quality sound, but they also provide various innovative new services and programs, such as electronic program guide, personalized advertisements, control, IP encapsulation, data broadcasting various interactive services. High Definition (HD) programming requires installation of completely new production and distribution equipment and systems. This is a major capital investment for a broadcaster. This work seeks to provide an overview of the influence of MPEG-4 standard on DTV from a perspective in Europe. The first part deals with some practical elements of the MPEG-4 standard. The focuses are on the set of technologies together with visual bitstream. The second part describes DTV development including Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) activities and achievements as well as high definition system origination for DTV. Finally, the third part describes control and encoding for DTV including the corresponding services.