UK's Freeview boxes could soon be obsolete

An executive from the digital TV industry has told a UK Government Select Committee hearing that the current receivers for the digital terrestrial TV (DTT) service Freeview could become obsolete.

Roger Lynch, chairman of service provider Video Networks, said that the industry will soon be moving from the MPEG2 digital broadcasting encoding standard to the more efficient MPEG4 standard, but the current boxes can only handle MPEG2.

Lynch pointed out that the more efficient MPEG4 only uses half the bandwidth, so that there's room to provide new services such as High Definition Television (HDTV).

Lynch believes there will come a point at which MPEG2 has to be switched off, and says that he's concerned that Freeview is investing so much in what he called "legacy technology".

Source: Electronics Weekly, Media Network