Opinion of May 10, 2005 on draft amendments to three technical decrees concerning digital television

In accordance with the second paragraph of article 12 of the amended law of September 30, 1986, the Conseil has been asked to give its opinion on three draft amendments to technical orders, concerning respectively :
- the decree of November 21, 2001 laying down the technical specifications applicable to equipment for receiving digital television signals;
- the order of December 27, 2001 on the characteristics of equipment for receiving services shown on digital terrestrial channels;
- the decree of December 24, 2001 setting the characteristics of transmitted signals.

The Conseil, after deliberation at its plenary meeting of May 10, 2005, notes that, in accordance with the Prime Minister's decision of December 24, 2004, the purpose of these projects is to impose the use of the MPEG-4 standard for video coding of pay services and high-definition services broadcast over digital terrestrial radio.

The Conseil notes that the drafts mention that, by way of derogation, the free-to-air slots of pay services that are required to show such slots will be diffused in MPEG-2. To date, two channels include this obligation in their agreements: Canal+ and TPS Star.

In addition, the Council has a number of observations to make on these projects.

1. The Conseil notes that the draft decrees do not include any technical elements to characterize high definition, which is one of their aims. The legal managerial framework for high definition could usefully be completed on this point, in the light of the initial results of the work carried out by the industrial players concerned in terms of labeling.

2. The Conseil considers that article 2 of the draft decree of December 24, 2001, as amended, should no longer make provision for the cross-referencing of service information between multiplexes. On sites where local transmissions or opting out occur, such cross-referencing would require the insertion of new data at the level of each multiplex, which would increase the cost of technical services and be likely to degrade signal quality.
The Conseil also notes that during the pre-deployment phase, the non-crossing of service information did not create any difficulties in the initialization of adapters.

3. The Conseil emphasizes the importance of combining the first two paragraphs of article 3 of the draft decree of December 27, 2001, as amended, into a single paragraph, which would make it possible to consider that they have the same scope of application, i.e. reception on the terminals referred to in article 1 of free-to-air services not shown in high definition.

4. The Conseil recalls that it considers that the scarcity of terrestrial resources planned for DTT before the switch-off of analog broadcasting makes it problematic in the short term to show free-to-air TV services in HD and therefore in MPEG-4, since :
- these services will also have to be simultaneously shown in MPEG-2 standard definition,
- the same terrestrial resource will also have to meet the needs of local television services and any DVB-H television or radio services for mobile reception.

5. the Conseil wishes to point out that, as part of its powers under article 25 of the amended law of September 30, 1986, it is continuing its work on defining the technical conditions for future terrestrial broadcasting of high-definition and mobile services. Once this work is completed, further amendments to the decrees may be necessary.

This notice will be published in the Journal officiel de la République française.