The D-Book

ABOUT THE D-BOOK

The D-Book is the technical specification for all digital terrestrial television products and services in the UK market. Produced in partnership with industry, and based on International Standards, the D-Book ensures interoperability across the chain from broadcaster to the viewer, enabling manufacturers and service providers to deliver high quality products and content to market with confidence.

The DTG’s founding objective remains at its core today – to safeguard the UK digital television industry by ensuring a universally deployed and interoperable linear and interactive TV technical standard. This is uniquely achieved through the industry co-created DTG D-Book and DTG Test Suites. These continue to evolve to meet sector needs as we embrace market innovations driven by new networks, IP, cyber security, sector and consumer innovation and legal compliance requirements.

As a set of critical implementation requirements, the D-Book ensures a wide choice of consumer electronics devices from a range of international manufacturers in the market.

DTG Testing is a non-profit, independent organisation operating in the heart of the digital TV industry in the UK. A vital resource for the TV and IP industries and a trusted partner to the regulators we have the world’s largest collection of receivers in the DTG Zoo. These world class facilities, combined with our engineer expertise make DTG Testing the interoperability testing house for the UK digital TV market. The new UK cybersecurity compliance requirements required from 29 April 2024 are supported by DTG JV SafeShark.

Each year our technical experts and DTG working groups produce the D-Book, the definitive list of specifications for UK digital TV which supports the consumer electronics sector by ensuring device interoperability throughout its entire life cycle.

Interoperability underpins the ongoing success of Freeview Play, Freesat, BT TV, Now, TalkTalk TV and YouView. As the complexity of these platforms increases, the importance of interoperability and conformance against tests is greater than ever.

The D-Book has successfully supported the introduction of HD and DVB-T2 as well as the clearance of the 700 MHz band – which was completed in August 2020 (although one DTT multiplex continued to use channel 55 as part of the 700 MHz band ‘duplex gap’ until June 2022).

The D-Book is continuously evolving with the market, supporting the development of products and services and removing requirements that are no longer needed.

With the latest HbbTV specification recently published by ETSI, D-Book 12.8 aligns the interactive application functionality requirements and adds HbbTV test suite guidance for manufacturers. The new D-Book includes updates in RF chapters to complete edits due to the recent 700 MHz clearance programme, as well as clarifying a target for testing RF Echoes (previously listed as “TBD”). Additionally, unused AFD modes are now no longer listed in chapters 3 and 24.

The DTG welcomes contributions from members on the evolution of hybrid distribution systems, which will feed into the development of future editions of the D-Book. The DTG continues to ensure European and international harmonisation wherever possible while meeting the needs of the rapidly developing and highly successful UK TV market.

The D-Book is updated and published annually by the DTG working groups and is available FREE to Members.

DTG members can download the D Book here.

Non-members can purchase the D-Book for £53,000 by getting in touch here.