Enhancing Viewer Experience With Next-Generation Digital Television Multicast

Remember the days of the rooftop antenna?

Transmission would fail with monotonous regularity, signalling the departure of someone to the top of the house. The rooftop warrior would spend several minutes adjusting antenna direction and orientation, to shouts of ‘is it clear now?’ and ‘not yet!’. Imagine the tension when the whole country was tuning in to an Epic series - literally.

Broadcast technology has come a long way since then: having migrated to cable, currently, over half of the population has a television and 475 million people view TV daily, according to the Broadcast Audience Research Council1. The launch of Digital TV in the early 2010s drove viewership further. Today Internet TV (or IPTV) is available in the form of Netix and Amazon Prime.

However, the TV experience is only as powerful as the telecom infrastructure behind it. India’s legacy cable TV distribution infrastructure may limit the number of viewers, number of channels as well as the extent of interactivity (delivered via the internet) possible. Broadcasters and cable operators have to identify new technologies to keep pace with consumer expectation