What Is Dvb-T?

Around the world, car DVD players are becoming ever more popular to many more people, mainly because they can offer ways of listening to music, watching movies and also viewing television stations while operating a vehicle that just wasn't possible a couple of years ago.

One such method for doing all of the above in many parts of the world is through the use of a tuner known as DVB-T. Knowing what this tuner is can help to answer the question “Car DVD player mysteries: What is DVB-T?”

Basically, the above term is an abbreviation that stands for “digital Video Broadcasting-Terrestrial.” It is also the industry standard – first developed in Europe by the Digital Video Broadcasting Consortium-- for how digital terrestrial television is broadcast.

This standard, in effect, is the “law” for how digital television can be beamed for receipt at the other end by equipment built to this standard and making use of certain tuners.

It first appeared in 1997, from the United Kingdom and is now the recognized standard in many parts of the world and in several countries in the Americas, though not in the United States.

It allows for the efficient compression and streaming of audio, video and other types of data digitally in what is called the MPEG transport system. The physics behind it can be complicated, so it's just best to remember that it is a standard for how to transmit information digitally.

Many car DVD players and other devices that are designed to receive and then play digital audio and video come equipped with DVB-T, by the way, though these devices are far more common in Europe and the old British Commonwealth countries than anywhere else.

China and all North American countries make use of a different digital video broadcasting standard, so the chances are slim that one would see a car DVD player equipped with this tuner in those regions.

There are several other different digital television and digital broadcasting standards that exist, with many countries allowing for the manufacture and distribution of car DVD players and other devices that feature not only those tuners but also DVB-T. North American players and devices go with what is known as ATSC.

Simply put, DVB-T is different in the way it carries all that data over the air. Many other methods will do so through use of a single radio frequency, while DVB-T does so by splitting all of that data into a very large number of slower digital information streams and then reassembling them at the point of receipt.

There are three different standards for DVB-T, so knowing which standard your player is operating under can be important because two of those standards are more recent and equipment making use of older-standard players may not work or interface at all with the newer-standard players.

When buying or selling a car DVD player, it can be important to know how the player handles those signals, as well.

A car DVD player equipped with digital video broadcast capability is all about compression rate, meaning how fast it can squeeze and then decode signals coming from a broadcast source, which will also impact the quality of any pictures displayed.

It is easy enough to figure out the digital video broadcast standard for any country by going online and then pulling up a DVB-T map or looking at the product box, which will clearly highlight the tuners for the countries in which the player is made to operate.