DVB Specification for Data Broadcasting

The Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) project [13] is a consortium of over 300 companies and regulatory bodies in over 35 countries committed to designing global standards for the delivery of DTV programs and data services. Its members are mainly from Europe. The counterpart of ATSC A/90 by DVB is called ``DVB Specification for Data Broadcasting''. It is adopted by European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) [14] as the datacast standard for data transmission over the MPEG-2 Transport Streams. This specification was initially published in 1997, and the latest version [35] was published in Jan, 2003. In essence, the DVB specification uses similar schemes as ATSC A/90. For example, it also supports three categories of data with timing models asynchronous, synchronous, and synchronized; and its data transport protocols also borrow the Data Download Protocol and the packet format of DSM-CC section from the DSM-CC standard. However, differences do exist between these two standards and efforts are made by ATSC to allow the ATSC A/90 largely compatible with the DVB specification [8].