Media Tech Bites: Is DVB now Irrelevant?

Here’s my short take on a piece of media technology. This week I look at a mature overripe technology, DVB. Do you agree? [blog.mindrocketnow.com]

20 years ago, when I first started out in this business, I learnt the DVB standards. This gave me a competitive advantage as a consultant; being confident with the detail down to the specification of the tables meant that I could confidently integrate broadcast systems. My last role was deeply technical as well, but the knowledge that was prized was how to use API wrappers in C++ code. Not once did I need to cast my memory back to DVB standards. For me personally, my hard-won DVB experience is now irrelevant.

DVB (and its family of standards) are still critical to broadcasters. It has fulfilled its promise of lower cost through interoperability. It’s been an objective success, and reaches millions of people daily. It’s not DVB that’s the problem, but broadcast. 

It’s becoming increasingly obvious that the future of broadcast is to be delivered over the internet. Yes, satellite has much larger footprint, yes terrestrial has fine-grained reach, but when I read the tech press, most of the arguments come from a place of wanting to continue to sweat assets that we spent so much time and effort building. None of that matters to people who consume these services. As I’ve often commented, people just want to watch TV without needing to worry about how they’re watching it.

So as broadcast becomes just another service over the internet, the skills needed to push this forward are the same as software delivery in any other industry. Just like all those pylons holding up TV transmitters around the country, my memorisation of DVB standards is now just another sunk cost.