Digital video broadcast (DVB) is a MPEG-2-based digital television standard that defines formats for cable, satellite, and terrestrial broadcast. DVB standards are in use in many non-USA digital TV systems. DVB was set up by the EBU (European Broadcast Union) in teh early 1990s to develop standards for digital video transmission. They have published these via ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) who also set standards for devices such as GSM telephones. In fact there are several DVB standards for different transmission media. Some of these are:

• DVB-S Satellite 
• DVB-C Cable 
• DVB-T Terrestrial 
• DVB-SI Specification for Service Information
• DVB-CI Common Interface for conditional access

Besides audio and video transmission, DVB also defines data connections (DVB-DATA - EN 301 192) with return channels (DVB-RC) for several media (DECT, GSM, PSTN/ISDN, satellite etc.) and protocols (DVB-IPI: Internet Protocol; DVB-NPI: network protocol independent).

Older technologies like teletext (DVB-TXT) and vertical blanking interval data (DVB-VBI) are also supported by the standards to ease conversion. However for many applications more advanced alternatives like DVB-SUB for sub-titling are available.

References

• Transponder
• Wikipedia: Digital Video Broadcasting