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There Really Aren’t Any HDTV Standards
Should there be?

Back in the late 1980’s the Advanced Television Advisory Committee was formed with the purpose of creating a set of standards for HDTV. A report exploring HDTV quality says that the efforts of the ATC had minimal impact and suggests that there really are no HDTV standards. The report notes that there are requirements regarding the number of pixels a signal must have but says that there is no rule about the quality of those pixels. More importantly, it notes the fact that HDTV requires a high bit rate when uncompressed and therefore is typically compressed to some degree which compromises picture quality.

quote:
"Surprisingly, there is little regulatory control over compression. According to ATSC president Mark Richer, the ATSC standard does not require minimum bit rates for over-the-air broadcasters, and the FCC requires only that broadcasters provide at least one service that is equivalent to analog television."
Satellite and cable companies have been challenged about the compression issue with customers and are working to make changes but the suggestion is that there should be some better standards put into place for HDTV today.


Most recommended from 39 comments



Argggghhhhh
@charter.com

2 recommendations

Argggghhhhh

Anon

What? No Standards?


I don't think there's an ATSC quality standard for the same reason that there's never been a standard for picture quality with NTSC. If a station didn't want to spend the money for a high quality transmission plant, then they suffered picture quality and they do so at their own peril. Who wants to watch a program where the detail sucks or the there's color shifts? If ATSC stations choose to have an "HD" channel running at 9 megabits and a flock of 1 megabit 480i sub-channels, they do so at their own peril.

This move to digital was never about the consumer, for if it was NTSC would run in parallel with ATSC until the last NTSC tube blew its filaments and was laid to rest. Instead, this is about a frequency grab and it is being paid for by television broadcasters who have to shell out millions of dollars for a new plant at a time when viewer counts are hitting the skids and consumers who have to spend anywhere from $50 to thousands in order to replace what has been working fine for years and years.

This time next year, there will still be people who are sitting in their living rooms wondering what the hell happened to their over-the-air broadcasts.