Internet over MPEG-2 transmission networks

摘要

Broadband for all! All-IP networks! These are the slogans for the early 21st century, reflecting the ascent of telephony in the 20th century. Beyond the slogans, however, there lie the challenges: getting broadband to even the remotest of areas and making legacy networks IP friendly. This Special Issue addresses how the MPEG-2 broadcast community is responding to the challenge. In the early 1990s, digital TV broadcast had been thought to be impractical and too costly to implement, and the idea of using it as a data transmission platform was unheard of. September 1993 saw European broadcasters and digital industry representatives meeting together to plan the launch of digital television in the formation of the Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) Project. Considerable progress was achieved, built on the success of the MPEG-2 standard. This lead to a set of open and common technical mechanisms for the delivery of digital television broadcasts to consumers. Existing satellite technology was to prove successful in this market, and was supplemented by new approaches using digital technologies over terrestrial media. Later, the DVB Project expanded into middleware and content delivery introducing the activities of the Multimedia Home Platform (MHP) and the release of the first DVB-MHP specification in June 2000. As the convergence of broadcast and Internet became a reality, the DVB 2.0 strategy was adopted. Much of that original objective has already been achieved as will be reflected in the articles of the special issue.