Brazil. Brazil's official adoption of its "DTV+" system marks an important milestone in the Americas' transition to next-generation broadcasting. This was highlighted by ATSC™, the Broadcasting™ Standards Association, responsible for the ATSC 3.0 set of standards.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed a landmark presidential decree on August 27 establishing the ATSC 3.0-based DTV+ system as the country's future television format.
The system is already on the air with experimental broadcasts in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, and the country plans to launch a station in Brasilia later this year. Commercial services are anticipated to start in time for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
ATSC 3.0 technology is used in the core physical and transport layers of the Brazilian DTV+ format, as well as in video, audio, captioning, and emergency alert systems. The Decree is issued just one week after the SET Expo, the largest broadcasting, media and entertainment meeting in Latin America.
According to Madeleine Noland, president of ATSC, the adoption of ATSC 3.0 technologies in Brazil is particularly significant, as terrestrial TV remains the most popular platform for consumers in Brazil, where it is used by approximately 80% of the population.
Luiz Fausto, ATSC's Vice President of Standards Development and who actively participated in the testing of the new Brazilian standard, stated: "Broadcasters across Brazil take decisions about how to reach nearly 200 million viewers very seriously, and the decree is the culmination of a long process that evaluated various next-generation broadcast technologies to select the best ones that will serve broadcasters and viewers for the longest time. the coming decades".
The Brazilian DTV+ system, formerly referred to by its developers as "TV 3.0," uses many elements of ATSC 3.0, the set of broadcast television standards used in the United States for NEXTGEN TV and in South Korea for UHD Broadcast. ATSC 3.0 has also been adopted by Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, and is currently being evaluated and tested in other countries, including Canada, India, and Mexico.
