Car DVD
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.
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.
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.
