ATSC standards

Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) standards are an international set of standards for broadcast and <a href="/facts/Digital_television/KQCyILQa">digital television</a> transmission over terrestrial, cable and satellite networks. It is largely a replacement for the analog <a href="/facts/NTSC/HYWIvxCR">NTSC</a> standard. Like NTSC, ATSC is used mostly in the <a href="/facts/United_States/P0sCdLe5">United States</a>, <a href="/facts/Mexico/IT5bwhdh">Mexico</a>, <a href="/facts/Canada/cWWFM8oc">Canada</a>, <a href="/facts/South_Korea/pCobAaVw">South Korea</a>, <a href="/facts/Trinidad_and_Tobago/jTXQP4Fe">Trinidad and Tobago</a>. Several former NTSC users like <a href="/facts/Japan/U5mz0SRT">Japan</a>, have not used ATSC during their <a href="/facts/Digital_television_transition/egLLIUlR">digital television transition</a>, because they adopted other systems like <a href="/facts/ISDB/mJ3Nr25E">ISDB</a> developed by Japan and <a href="/facts/DVB/jzgt5Q48">DVB</a> developed in Europe, for example.
The ATSC standards were developed in the early 1990s by the <a href="/facts/Grand_Alliance_(HDTV)/MuvXMxp1">Grand Alliance</a>, a consortium of electronics and telecommunications companies that assembled to develop a specification for what is now known as <a href="/facts/HDTV/AuE6FRFI">HDTV</a>. The standard is now administered by the <a href="/facts/Advanced_Television_Systems_Committee/JhzeErLa">Advanced Television Systems Committee</a>. It includes a number of <a href="/facts/Patent/LjT2bG3A">patented</a> elements, and licensing is required for devices that use these parts of the standard. Key among these is the <a href="/facts/8VSB/vUX6TE9d">8VSB</a> modulation system used for <a href="/facts/Terrestrial_television/3nTUr9cY">over-the-air</a> broadcasts. ATSC 1.0 technology was primarily developed with patent contributions from <a href="/facts/LG_Electronics/9aeXYv1t">LG Electronics</a>, which held most of the patents for the ATSC standard.
ATSC includes two primary high definition video formats, <a href="/facts/1080i/0jhp3TNV">1080i</a> and <a href="/facts/720p/kHKsELNr">720p</a>. It also includes <a href="/facts/SDTV/dvqEXg2A">standard-definition</a> formats, although initially only HDTV services were launched in the digital format. ATSC can carry multiple channels of information on a single stream, and it is common for there to be a single high-definition signal and several standard-definition signals carried on a single 6 MHz (former NTSC) channel allocation.

ATSC standards open-in-new

ATSC standards