List of ATSC standards
Encyclopedia
Below are the published ATSC standards for ATSC digital television service, issued by the Advanced Television Systems Committee
.
Recently-amended standards:
ATSC-M/H
for mobile TV
is still pending , though it is known that it will use MPEG-4
instead of MPEG-2
.
Advanced Television Systems Committee
The Advanced Television Systems Committee is the group, established in 1982, that developed the eponymous ATSC Standards for digital television in the United States, also adopted by Canada, Mexico, South Korea, and recently Honduras and is being considered by other countries.-See also:*ATSC...
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- A/52B: audio data compression (Dolby AC-3Dolby DigitalDolby Digital is the name for audio compression technologies developed by Dolby Laboratories. It was originally called Dolby Stereo Digital until 1994. Except for Dolby TrueHD, the audio compression is lossy. The first use of Dolby Digital was to provide digital sound in cinemas from 35mm film prints...
and E-AC-3Dolby Digital PlusDolby Digital Plus is a digital audio compression scheme. It is an incompatible development of the technologies used in the earlier Dolby Digital system. E-AC-3 has a number of improvements aimed at increasing quality at a given bitrate compared with legacy Dolby Digital...
) - A/53E: "ATSC Digital Television Standard" (the primary document governing the standard)
- A/55: "Program Guide for Digital Television" (now deprecated in favor of A/65 PSIP)
- A/57A: "Content Identification and Labeling for ATSC Transport" (for assigning a unique digital number to each episodeEpisodeAn episode is a part of a dramatic work such as a serial television or radio program. An episode is a part of a sequence of a body of work, akin to a chapter of a book. The term sometimes applies to works based on other forms of mass media as well, as in Star Wars...
of each TV show, to assist DVRsDigital video recorderA digital video recorder , sometimes referred to by the merchandising term personal video recorder , is a consumer electronics device or application software that records video in a digital format to a disk drive, USB flash drive, SD memory card or other local or networked mass storage device...
) - A/63: "Standard for Coding 25/50 Hz Video" (for use with PAL and SECAM-originated programming)
- A/64A "Transmission Measurement and Compliance for Digital Television"
- A/65C: "Program and System Information ProtocolProgram and System Information ProtocolThe Program and System Information Protocol is the protocol used in the ATSC digital television system for carrying metadata about each channel in the broadcast MPEG transport stream of a TV station and for publishing information about television programs so that viewers can select what to watch...
for Terrestrial Broadcast and Cable" (PSIP includes virtual channelVirtual channelIn telecommunications, a logical channel number , also known as virtual channel, is a channel designation which differs from that of the actual radio channel on which the signal travels....
s, electronic program guideElectronic program guideElectronic program guides and interactive program guides provide users of television, radio, and other media applications with continuously updated menus displaying broadcast programming or scheduling information for current and upcoming programming...
s, and content ratingContent ratingContent rating most often means the suitability-to-audience of TV broadcasts, movies, comic books, or computer games.The introduction of Internet to the global population has revolutionized the way of consuming and gaining access to the virtually unlimited variety of contents...
s) - A/68: "PSIP Standard for TaiwanTaiwanTaiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
" (defines use of Chinese characterChinese characterChinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and Japanese , less frequently Korean , formerly Vietnamese , or other languages...
s via UnicodeUnicodeUnicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
3.0) - A/69: recommended practices for implementing PSIP at a TV station
- A/70A: "Conditional Access System for Terrestrial Broadcast"
- A/76: "Programming Metadata Communication ProtocolProgramming Metadata Communication ProtocolProgramming Metadata Communication Protocol is a standard for use within digital television broadcast facilities for transfer of the source data used to generate electronic program guide listings and other program-related information...
" (XMLXMLExtensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
-based PMCP maintains PSIP metadataMetadataThe term metadata is an ambiguous term which is used for two fundamentally different concepts . Although the expression "data about data" is often used, it does not apply to both in the same way. Structural metadata, the design and specification of data structures, cannot be about data, because at...
though a TV station's airchainAirchainIn broadcast engineering for radio or television, the airchain or transmission chain is the path or route an audio or video signal takes on its way through a radio station or television station.The airchain begins with cameras, microphones, CD players, turntables, telephone hybrids, video tape...
) - A/79: "Conversion of ATSC Signals for Distribution to NTSCNTSCNTSC, named for the National Television System Committee, is the analog television system that is used in most of North America, most of South America , Burma, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, and some Pacific island nations and territories .Most countries using the NTSC standard, as...
Viewers" (recommended practice, issued February 2009) - A/80: "Modulation and Coding Requirements for Digital TV (DTV) Applications Over Satellite" (ATSC-S)
- A/81: "Direct-to-Home Satellite Broadcast Standard" (not yet implemented by any services)
- A/90: "Data Broadcast Standard" (for datacastingDatacastingDatacasting is the broadcasting of data over a wide area via radio waves. It most often refers to supplemental information sent by television stations along with digital television, but may also be applied to digital signals on analog TV or radio...
) - A/92: "Delivery of IP Multicast Sessions over Data Broadcast Standard" (for IP multicasting)
- A/93: "Synchronized/Asynchronous Trigger Standard"
- A/94: "ATSC Data Application Reference Model"
- A/95: "Transport Stream File System Standard" (TSFS is a special file systemFile systemA file system is a means to organize data expected to be retained after a program terminates by providing procedures to store, retrieve and update data, as well as manage the available space on the device which contain it. A file system organizes data in an efficient manner and is tuned to the...
for downloading computer fileComputer fileA computer file is a block of arbitrary information, or resource for storing information, which is available to a computer program and is usually based on some kind of durable storage. A file is durable in the sense that it remains available for programs to use after the current program has finished...
s) - A/96: "ATSC Interaction Channel Protocols" (interactive TV)
- A/97: "Software Data Download Service" (used by UpdateTV for upgradeUpgradeThe term upgrade refers to the replacement of a product with a newer version of the same product. It is most often used in computing and consumer electronics, generally meaning a replacement of hardware, software or firmware with a newer or better version, in order to bring the system up to date...
s and software patches in ATSC tunerATSC tunerAn ATSC tuner, often called an ATSC receiver or HDTV tuner is a type of television tuner that allows reception of digital television television channels transmitted by television stations in North America, parts of Central America and South Korea that use ATSC standards...
s) - A/100: "DTV Application Software Environment - Level 1" (DASE-1)
- A/101: "Advanced Common Application PlatformAdvanced Common Application PlatformThe Advanced Common Application Platform is intended to provide television consumers with advanced interactive services and offer content providers, broadcasters, cable and satellite operators, and consumer electronics manufacturers the technical details necessary to develop interoperable services...
" (ACAP) - A/110A: "Synchronization Standard for Distributed TransmissionDistributed transmission systemIn North American digital terrestrial television broadcasting, a distributed transmission system is a form of single-frequency network in which a single broadcast signal is fed via microwave, landline, or communications satellite to multiple synchronised terrestrial radio transmitter sites...
" (single-frequency networkSingle-frequency networkA single-frequency network or SFN is a broadcast network where several transmitters simultaneously send the same signal over the same frequency channel.-Overview:...
s) - A/112: E-VSBE-VSBE-VSB or Enhanced VSB is an optional enhancement to the original ATSC Standards that use the 8VSB modulation system used for transmission of digital television. It is intended for improving reception where signals are weaker, including fringe reception areas, and on portable devices such as...
Recently-amended standards:
- the main ATSC standard has been recently amended to support Enhanced ATSC; this transmission mode is backwardly compatible, but provides much better error correction.
ATSC-M/H
ATSC-M/H
ATSC-M/H is a standard in the USA for mobile digital TV, that allows TV broadcasts to be received by mobile devices.....
for mobile TV
Mobile TV
Mobile television usually means television watched on a small handheld device. It may be a pay TV service broadcast on mobile phone networks or received free-to-air via terrestrial television stations from either regular broadcast or a special mobile TV transmission format...
is still pending , though it is known that it will use MPEG-4
MPEG-4
MPEG-4 is a method of defining compression of audio and visual digital data. It was introduced in late 1998 and designated a standard for a group of audio and video coding formats and related technology agreed upon by the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group under the formal standard ISO/IEC...
instead of MPEG-2
MPEG-2
MPEG-2 is a standard for "the generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of lossy video compression and lossy audio data compression methods which permit storage and transmission of movies using currently available storage media and transmission...
.