SLBC backs digital radio forum in Colombo

Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC) is supporting pioneering efforts to introduce cutting edge technology that would take radio broadcasting in Asia to the digital era.

The Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) Consortium has announced a DRM+ trial and workshop in Colombo to boost these initiatives. The consortium is joining forces with the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRC), SLBC and Germany’s international broadcaster Deutsche Welle and the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU) to run a trial of DRM+ and showcase its benefits.

The SLBC has offered the DRM its full support and the use of one of its low power stations in Colombo for the duraion of the trial.

SLRC going to digital....

Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation (SLRC), is the national television network of Sri Lanka. Gifted by the people of Japan to the people of Sri Lanka, mainly for the provision of education and useful information.
The network broadcasts services,'Rupavahini, Nethra TV (which broadcasts in Tamil) , and Channel Eye (which broadcasts in English). Since 1 January 2008 Nethra TV and Channel Eye share the same broadcast frequency. The shared channel is known as Nethra Eye. Currently, all of the network's services are only available by analog transmission. But there are plans to upgrade to digital broadcasting

1st Sports Channel Launched In Sri Lanka

CSN (Carlton Sports Network) has replaced Prime TV over FTA & on all pay television networks that Prime TV was available on. CSN becomes the first locally operated sports channel in the country & it is still expected to retain some of the Prime TV programming giving it a more of a sports & lifestyle channel genre.

This channel is expected to broadcast many of the local big matches as well as school sports events in the near future.

Website : Carlton Sports Network - http://www.csn.lk/

DVB-T pilot launched

Sri Lanka’s Dialog Television began a pilot DVB-T launch on the 23rd January 2008 in the city of Colombo. The pilot broadcasts will initially be tested by a selected group of representative viewers across the broadcast coverage area.
Nine channels will be available on a single UHF channel. The programme mix consists of state channels, Rupavahini Eye, Nethra and ITN as well as the private channels, Derana, Swarnavahini and The Buddhist. Three foreign channels will also be made available to complete the line-up.
Source: Daily News.lk

DVB-T2 to be introduced in Sri Lanka

The Digital Video Broadcasting’s DVB-T2 digital terrestrial broadcasting standard will be introduced to all television channels in Sri Lanka by the year 2015 said Secretary to the Ministry Mass Media W B Ganegala.
Speaking to Lankapuvath, the Secretary said that the DVB-T2 system is already used in Europe while the Committee appointed to look into the eligibility of its use in Sri Lanka has confirmed that it could be used for local TV channels.
The Committee is to get the permission of the Sri Lankan Government to the report on implementing the system in the country he said. It would take at least 5 years to introduce the DVB-T2 technology to Sri Lanka while the Ministry aims at implementing it in several phases and under the first phase the system will be introduced to the Western Province mentioned the Secretary.
Further he said that by the year 2015 all TV stations in the island will function with the DVB-T2 system.
At present channels in Sri Lanka are broadcasted using the analogue system and with the DVB-T2 system broadcasting would be made more productive and efficient stated Secretary Ganegala. The system will also reduce the cost on TV stations he added.
Sri Lanka began pilot trials using DVB-T in 2008 and adopted the system in August 2009.
However following the development of the DVB-T2 system, which has 50% more capacity using the same channel bandwidth, it now intends to switch to DVB-T2.
The trend towards DVB-T2 is increasing especially in countries where Digital TV is still to be introduced. This is because the additional capacity DVB-T2 provides is much greater than with any other current DTT system and it can be implemented at much the same cost as for DVB-T.
Main source: Lankapuvath National News Agency of Sri Lanka

Digital Terrestrial Television

DVB-T is an abbreviation for Digital Video Broadcasting — Terrestrial; it is the DVB European-based consortium standard for the broadcast transmission of digital terrestrial television that was first published in 1997[1] and first broadcast in the UK in 1998.[2] This system transmits compressed digital audio, video and other data in an MPEG transport stream, using coded orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (COFDM or OFDM) modulation.