Ofcom, the UK’s equivalent of the FCC, made public Nov. 21 a proposal to upgrade Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) to offer more channels and new services, including HDTV, by as soon as 2009.
According to the Ofcom, the upgrade could be ready in time for the nation’s switchover to digital in the Granada Television region in northwest England scheduled for late 2009 or early 2010. As the digital switchover is rolled out subsequently throughout the UK, the new services would be made available across the country. Ultimately, four HD services would be available by 2012.
To participate in the upgrade, viewers would be required to replace existing DTT set-top boxes based on MPEG-2 with new boxes or sets with integrated tuners that have MPEG-4 decoders and support DVB-T2.
For more information, visit www.ofcom.org.uk.
