(
Digital
Video
Broadcasting) An international digital TV standard that is the European and Far Eastern counterpart of the North American ATSC standard. Administered by the DVB Project within the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), the first DVB programs were broadcast in the U.K. in 1998, while many other countries followed in the 2000s. See
ATSC.
DVB uses MPEG-2 for video compression and MPEG-2 and Dolby Digital for audio. It is transmitted in a 6 to 8 MHz channel via traditional terrestrial broadcast (DVB-T), satellite (DVB-S) and cable (DVB-C). A version for handhelds (DVB-H) is also provided (see
mobile TV), and a Java-based platform is part of the DVB Project (see
DVB-MHP).