<p>Digital television is one of the biggest broadcasting media available. All over the world television companies are rearranging their broadcasting from analogue to digital transmission. Former standard disagreements in the analogue era have lead to an agreement of one common European standard for digital television. Countries like USA and Japan have their own similar standards.</p><p>The report consists of two objectives; a survey of the most commonly used standards for digital television today and the construction of a prototype receiver for the second generation satellite DVB-standard.</p><p>A thorough literature study and careful design resulted in a fully functioning system. Measurements performed on the DVB-S sections gave exemplary results. Comparing these results with corresponding measurements performed on the DVB-S2 section showed much better performance for DVB-S2 with the same code rates. This shows some of the advantages of the new standard and proving the coding theory right. New coding algorithms make it possible to transmit more information on noisier channels of inferior quality. In laymen’s words; DVB-S2 gives a better picture and more television channels on the same satellite compared to DVB-S.</p>