In Construction!ATSC Digital TV Standard

 
The following short summary is taken from the ATSC Home Page.
Please, go to the ATSC Home Page for more information.
ATSC Digital Television Standard

The ATSC Digital Television Standard (Document A/53) specifies video format, video compression, audio compression, packet transport, and RF modulation subsystems. A brief summary of each subsystem follows.

Further information is provided in a "tutorial" ATSC has produced, Guide to the Use of the ATSC Digital Television Standard (Document A/54).

Video Format

The video scanning formats supported by the ATSC Digital Television Standard are shown in the following table.

ATV system scanning formats.
Vertical Lines 
Horizontal Pixels 
Aspect Ratio 
Picture Rate 
1080 
1920 
16:9 
60I 30P 24P 
720 
1280 
16:9 
60P 30P 24P 
480 
704 
16:9 & 4:3 
60I 60P 30P 24P 
480 
640 
4:3 
60I 60P 30P 24P 
In the table in the picture rate column, the "I" means interlaced scan and the "P" means progressive scan. Both NTSC rates and integer rates are supported (i.e., 60.00, 59.94, 30.00, 29.97, 24.00, and 23.98).

Video Compression

Video compression is based on the MPEG-2 Main Profile specified in Part 2 of ISO/IEC 13818. The video formats span the range of Main Level to High Level.

Audio Compression

Audio compression is based on the AC-3 system which is specified in the ATSC Digital Audio Compression Standard (Document A/52). The sample rate is 48 kHz. The system supports five surround channels plus a subwoffer channel.

Transport

The transport subsystem is based on the MPEG-2 Transport Stream specified in Part 1 of ISO/IEC 13818. Packets consist of 188 bytes (4 bytes in the header and 184 bytes of payload).

RF Modulation

The RF subsystem is 8 VSB. Using this technique, a 6 MHz terrestrial broadcasting channel can support a bit rate of 19.3 Mbps with a C/N threshold of 14.9 dB. 

ATSC Documents

Adobe provides a freeware application, Acrobat Reader, that will permit you to view and print the PDF files.

Microsoft provides a Windows freeware application, Word Viewer, that will permit you to view and print the DOC files.

Click here if you want to download the ATSC standard documents!! (Local Copy for fast downloads)
 

Last Update: 25 Aralęk 1997