14 Nov Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union General Assembly, Vietnam
The ABU has over 250 members from more than 50 countries, and covers the region containing more than half the world’s population. It is also a hugely diverse region, with members from the advanced technological nations of Japan and Korea, the huge populations of China and India, right through to the tiny Pacific Islands. But all the members are interested in broadcasting, both radio and television.
The GA is the top-most decision making body of the ABU (just as the GA is for DRM) and the ABU groups other important meetings with the GA to help members to meet each other and minimise their travelling. For several years now, I have joined the ABU Technical Committee meetings held alongside the GA on behalf of the BBC, and I’ve also provided updates for DRM along the way, including during the Digital Radio Forum meetings. Usually, in fact, there are several DRM representatives present, and there was no exception this year with our Chair, Ruxandra Obreja, and Fraunhofer’s Alex Zink participating.
The Technical Committee meetings, which took place over two days, covered a wide range of topics, including radio and television, analogue and digital, production and transmission, broadcast and broadband. At the Digital Radio Forum meeting Ruxandra and Alex provided an update on the progress of DRM over the past year. Ruxandra focussed particularly on the roll-out in India, whilst Alex gave participants the news about the new audio codec and played the film that demonstrates the enhanced quality that this brings. The presentation was very well received. There was also within this session an update from World DMB’s President, Jorn Jensen and from Turkish Radio on their open source radio production system.