Codificação escalável de vídeo para recepção fixa no sistema brasileiro de televisão digital.

On December 2007, starting from Sao Paulo city, the open digital terrestrial transmissions were launched in Brazil. A significant improvement of the Brazilian Digital TV System (SBTVD) was the adoption of the H.264/AVC standard supporting the 1080i video format for the high definition video coding. Wide adoption of high definition technology has been a process that can be observed in lots of countries, and new video formats, beyond 1080i have already been discussed and proposed. With both eyes in the next generation of TV, research centers like Japanese broadcaster NHK investigate human factors that should drive the system specifications of this one that may be the last step in terms of 2D television technology. Named UHDTV, the system may support 7680 horizontal dots per 4320 vertical dots in terms of resolution among other features. At the same time, the work exposed here discusses tools that support multimedia coding scalability as a way of gradually improving video formats for broadcast. This work specially deals with the H.264/AVC standard scalability tools, aiming their use within SBTVD. Therefore, the evolution of the system is discussed based on scalability and experimental results related to the digital TV spectral occupation in Sao Paulo city are analyzed, showing that there is enough exceeding bit rate available for future expansion. Initial results related to SVC coding are also shown, objectively indicating that video scalability is more advantageous than simulcast and that this technique can be used in SBTVD to provide new video formats, keeping compatibility with current receivers that only support 1080i format. This work presents theoretical and experimental contributions towards the adoption of SVC in the SBTVD, pointing out some future works that, if executed, could confirm the transmission of new video format in SBTVD in the next years.