News Flash - Hauppauge is now offering a PC tuner card for $400 that is capable of both receving and displaying all 18 ATSC formats. That's the whole ball of wax as for as both DTV and HDTV are concerned. Check it out at Hauppauge Web Site.
What is HDTV? - HDTV stands for High Defintion Television. HDTV accounts for six of the 18 video formats established as part of the standards for digital television set by the Advanced Television Standards Committee or the ATSC. Of the 18 formats, these are the highest resolution formats. All six formats feature a 16:9 aspect ratio and acommodate frame rates of 24, 30 and 60 frames per second.
What Does HDTV Mean For Me? - Have you ever watched a movie on a DVD (Digital Versatile Disk)? HDTV is basically the same media broadcast over the televison air waves. That media is an MPEG-2 compressed digitized video data stream. In fact, you can just think of all of the 18 ATSC video formats collectively as MPEG TV. That's really all it is. It's just a new application of digital video technology that has been around for years.
What is SDTV? - The other 12 video formats for MPEG TV are collectively known as Standard Definition Television or SDTV. These are lower resolution video formats. They encompass various combinations of 16:9 and 4:3 aspect ratios and frame rates of 24, 30 and 60 frames per second. The chart below summarizes all 18 ATSC video formats.
|
# |
HORIZ. |
VERT. |
ASPECT |
FRAMES |
SCAN MODE |
|
18 |
1920 |
1080 |
16:9 |
30 |
Interlaced |
|
17 |
1920 |
1080 |
16:9 |
30 |
Progressive |
|
16 |
1920 |
1080 |
16:9 |
24 |
Progressive |
|
15 |
1280 |
720 |
16:9 |
60 |
Progressive |
|
14 |
1280 |
720 |
16:9 |
30 |
Progressive |
|
13 |
1280 |
720 |
16:9 |
24 |
Progressive |
|
12 |
704 |
480 |
16:9 |
30 |
Interlaced |
|
11 |
704 |
480 |
16:9 |
60 |
Progressive |
|
10 |
704 |
480 |
16:9 |
30 |
Progressive |
|
9 |
704 |
480 |
16:9 |
24 |
Progressive |
|
8 |
704 |
480 |
4:3 |
30 |
Interlaced |
|
7 |
704 |
480 |
4:3 |
60 |
Progressive |
|
6 |
704 |
480 |
4:3 |
30 |
Progressive |
|
5 |
704 |
480 |
4:3 |
24 |
Progressive |
|
4 |
640 |
480 |
4:3 |
30 |
Interlaced |
|
3 |
640 |
480 |
4:3 |
60 |
Progressive |
|
2 |
640 |
480 |
4:3 |
30 |
Progressive |
|
1 |
640 |
480 |
4:3 |
24 |
Progressive |
What do Progressive and Interlaced mean? - With Interlaced scanning, the lines of a frame are displayed in two passes - half in each pass. With Progressive scanning, all of the lines of a frame are displayed in one pass. In other words, 60 scans per second in Interlaced scan mode equals 30 frames per second while 60 scans per second in progressive scan mode equals 60 frames per second.
The scan mode is often denoted by placing a "p" or "i" after the number of vertical lines as a format naming convention. 1080i refers to the 1920x1080 interlaced scanning format while 1080p refers to the other two 1920x1080 formats which both employ progressive scanning mode.
Is Digital Cable HDTV? - No. Digital cable today is the digital distribution of conventional NTSC TV. It has nothing to do with the ATSC formats except that it may provide a good platform for conversion to ATSC in the future.
What Does Digital Television Mean? - Digital Television or DTV is the term the ATSC would have us use to refer to all of the ATSC video formats collectively. I prefer to use the term MPEG TV because the other term has become so confusing. Cable systems often use the term Digital Television to describe their digital distribution upgrades. And, DTV also stands for Desktop Video and is another source of confusion.
Where Is MPEG TV Available in the US Today? - The link below will take you to a page on the National Association of Broadcasters Web site. This page lists all of the US network afilliate stations that have converted to MPEG TV broadcasting. When I checked on December 19, 1999, 106 afilliates had completed conversion.
US Television Broadcast Network Afilliates Convrted to HDTV
What Network Programs Are Broadcast in HDTV? - The links below will take you to the US TV network Web sites. There, you can find shows currently being broadcast in HDTV. As of December 21, 1999, CBS was broadcasting several prime time shows in HDTV. NBC was broadcasting only The Tonight Show in HDTV as far as I could tell. And, a search for HDTV on the ABC site failed to turn up any matches of any kind. If you know of any other networks broadcasting any programming in HDTV, let me know so I can add them to the list below.
The NetTable Forum - Click here to check out the NetTable message board. Discuss HDTV with other forum members.
If you have comments or suggestions for other questions to add to this FAQ, use the link below to send me an email message. Thanks!