Oops. Just realized I've been conflating DVB and DVB-T. I should have originally said that "DVB-T is used in Europe and some other places". DVB in general has become much more widespread, particularly DVB-S which really [b]is[/b] practically a global standard.
According to the DVB Project (official stewards of the DVB standards), one country outside of Europe (Australia) has fully launched DVB-T service and trials are being performed in a handful of Asian countries. So, where is DVB-T being used? Europe and some other places (like Australia).
ATSC is being used in the United States, Canada and South Korea. ISDB is being used in Japan.
The rest of the world is using.. squat! Nobody else is doing terrestrial digital broadcasting. Yet.
So... EVERYWHERE?
A number of countries have notionally adopted DVB-T as their digital broadcasting standard, and the number of DVB-T systems will surely grow more rapidly than ATSC. (Only a couple of countries have prospectively adopted ATSC.) But DVB-T is no more "the" world standard than is GSM. Oh well.
Here's a simple summary.
DVB is the digital broadcasting standard used in Europe (and some other places, like Australia). DVB-T is the variant used for "T"errestrial broadcasts; DVB is also used for digital satellite (DVB-S) and cable (DVB-C).
Many European countries have started doing DVB-T broadcasts, with the intention of eventually eliminating analogue transmission. There are many DVB-T set-top boxes on the market, as well as televisions with built-in DVB-T tuners. DVB-T PVRs have also started to appear.
This box is sort of half-of-a-PVR. Instead of using its own internal storage, it uses an SMB share or a USB hard drive. Clever - this should reduce the price.
The point of using MPEG-2 is that this is DVB's native video format. This box is not doing any encoding whatever; it's just saving a copy of the stream as it comes in from the aerial. The box only needs to be able to decode - this, too, should keep the price down.
DVB broadcasts are MPEG-2 encoded. This device surely simply stores the received MPEG-2 stream unchanged. It's the obvious thing to do (and the same thing done by, for example, the DirecTV TiVo and Windows XP Media Center Edition).
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Oops. Just realized I've been conflating DVB and DVB-T. I should have originally said that "DVB-T is used in Europe and some other places". DVB in general has become much more widespread, particularly DVB-S which really [b]is[/b] practically a global standard.
ATSC is being used in the United States, Canada and South Korea. ISDB is being used in Japan.
The rest of the world is using.. squat! Nobody else is doing terrestrial digital broadcasting. Yet.
So... EVERYWHERE?
A number of countries have notionally adopted DVB-T as their digital broadcasting standard, and the number of DVB-T systems will surely grow more rapidly than ATSC. (Only a couple of countries have prospectively adopted ATSC.) But DVB-T is no more "the" world standard than is GSM. Oh well.
Here's a simple summary. DVB is the digital broadcasting standard used in Europe (and some other places, like Australia). DVB-T is the variant used for "T"errestrial broadcasts; DVB is also used for digital satellite (DVB-S) and cable (DVB-C). Many European countries have started doing DVB-T broadcasts, with the intention of eventually eliminating analogue transmission. There are many DVB-T set-top boxes on the market, as well as televisions with built-in DVB-T tuners. DVB-T PVRs have also started to appear. This box is sort of half-of-a-PVR. Instead of using its own internal storage, it uses an SMB share or a USB hard drive. Clever - this should reduce the price. The point of using MPEG-2 is that this is DVB's native video format. This box is not doing any encoding whatever; it's just saving a copy of the stream as it comes in from the aerial. The box only needs to be able to decode - this, too, should keep the price down.
DVB broadcasts are MPEG-2 encoded. This device surely simply stores the received MPEG-2 stream unchanged. It's the obvious thing to do (and the same thing done by, for example, the DirecTV TiVo and Windows XP Media Center Edition).