Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting

Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting is the DAB and DVB format Japan has created to allow radio and television stations there to convert to digital.

The concept was named for its similarity to ISDN, because both allow multiple channels of data to be transmitted together. This is also much like another digital radio system, Eureka 147, which calls each group of stations on a transmitter an ensemble; and also like the multi-channel digital TV standards ATSC and DVB-T. ISDB will operate on unused TV channels, the approach taken by other countries for TV but never before for radio.

Brazil, which currently uses an analogue TV video format (PAL-M) slightly different than any other country, is also considering ISDB for its DTV format. Otherwise, no other countries are considering ISDB, although it does seem to have an advantage over ATSC and DVB-T in reception tests.