SINGAPORE audiences can look forward to enjoying enhanced TV-viewing experiences and greater choice in TV content on more innovative content delivery platforms in the near future.

This follows several new broadcasting developments announced by Dr Yaacob Ibrahim, Singapore's Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, at the opening of Infocomm Media Business Exchange (imbX) in June.

imbX, incorporating BroadcastAsia, CommunicAsia and EnterpriseIT, convenes over 2,000 companies and 50,000 delegates in Singapore to share insights into infocomm and media issues.

In his opening address, Dr Yaacob revealed that the Media Development Authority of Singapore (MDA) will be putting in place a nationwide trial infrastructure for the Digital Video Broadcasting – Second-Generation Terrestrial (DVB-T2) standard for Digital Terrestrial Television by September 2011.

The trial will be aimed at determining how the DVB-T2 standard can be suitably adopted for Singapore's terrain.

ASEAN has adopted the DVB-T standard for Digital Terrestrial Television, and Singapore is looking into early migration to DVB-T2, the second and latest generation of the DVB-T standard.

Dr Yaacob said: "I would like to urge industry players to leverage on the DVB-T2 coverage to test-bed new and innovative content, hardware and services. I am pleased to note that there is already industry interest to trial innovative use of digital signals for future content and services development over the DVB-T2 infrastructure, which augurs well for our local media industry."

The Minister also said that Singapore TV is on schedule to go fully digital, in line with ASEAN's committed timeframe to switch off analogue transmission between 2015 and 2020.

Innovative Content Delivery Platforms
In addition to the nationwide trial for DVB-T2, Singapore's broadcasting industry will also be seeing a couple of new developments within the next year.

Singapore's national broadcaster MediaCorp's seven free-to-air channels will go 'live' on the Internet within the next 12 months, the Minister said.

Viewers anywhere can thus stay abreast of local events through programmes that MediaCorp has rights to.

MediaCorp will also be launching a new interactive service known as Over-the-Top (OTT) in the second half of this year.

OTT consists of free and premium content streamed via broadband to different platforms such as TVs, PCs, tablet devices and mobile phones.

The yearlong nationwide 3DTV trial in Singapore was also successfully concluded and broadcasters in Singapore can now transmit 3D content into homes, added the Minister.

Singapore Pavilion at BroadcastAsia
Seventy Singapore companies exhibited their latest media technologies, equipment and solutions at the Singapore Pavilion at BroadcastAsia.

A highlight of the Singapore Pavilion was the MDA Showcase, featuring 11 companies with cutting-edge solutions in broadcasting, digital signage, interactive digital media and Internet protocol TV.

Among them was Singapore's pay-TV operator StarHub, which spotlighted its DVB-T2 transmission equipment.

MoSoNex received much attention with its product, also called MoSoNex. The company demonstrated how the product could enable a mobile-phone user to become a broadcaster of live video and images to a private network of TV, mobile phones and PCs.

Other companies in the MDA Showcase included MOSAIC MediaHouse, which exhibited its QRBoard digital display and QRBoard mobile marketing platform, and SyQic Capital, which presented its OTT Internet protocol TV streaming and media solutions.