BRAZILIA, BRAZIL — President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has signed off a Presidential Decree that establishes an ATSC 3.0-based DTV+ system as the country’s official digital broadcast television standard.
This allows a system on the air with experimental broadcasts in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo to move forward with a full national development in Brazil, with plans for a station in the nation’s capital of Brasilia to launch later this year.
Commercial services are anticipated to begin in time for the FIFA World Cup event in 2026.
ATSC 3.0 technology is used in Brazilian DTV+ format’s core Physical and Transport layers, as well as the Video, Audio, Captioning and Emergency Warning systems. The Decree comes just one week after the SET Expo, the annual gathering of broadcasting, media, and entertainment industries serving audiences across Latin America.
ATSC President Madeleine Noland says Brazil’s adoption of ATSC 3.0 technologies is particularly significant because terrestrial TV broadcasting remains the most popular platform for consumer viewing in Brazil, where it is used by about 80% of the population. “Brazil’s decision is further testimony that the international ATSC 3.0 standards is state-of-the-art and underscores its flexibility to meet the needs of a large and diverse country with such high reliance on terrestrial television viewing,” Noland said.
ATSC Vice President of Standards Development Luiz Fausto, who was deeply engaged with testing for the new Brazilian standard, said, “Broadcasters throughout Brazil take seriously the decisions about how best to reach nearly 200 million viewers, and the decree is the culmination of a long process that evaluated various next-generation broadcast technologies to select the ‘best of the best’ that will serve broadcasters and viewers for decades to come.”
The Brazilian DTV+ system, previously referred to by its developers as “TV 3.0,” utilizes many elements of ATSC 3.0, the suite of broadcast TV 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 & Tobago, and it is currently being considered and tested by a number of other nations other than the United States, including Canada, India and Mexico.
