ATSC

Committee on Advanced Television Standards. Formed to establish technical standards for digital television system in the United States.An ATSC Standard is a document that states basic specifications or criteria that are necessary for effective implementation and interoperability of Advanced Television Systems. In 1996, the ATSC's recommendations for a digital-television system were adopted by the FCC (Federal Communications Commission - the folks who set standards for TV broadcasts and regulate phone companies). ATSC standards use newer-than-1953 technology that opened a whole new world of TV viewing.

There are approximately 140 members representing the broadcast, broadcast equipment, motion picture, consumer electronics, computer, cable, satellite, and semiconductor industries. ATSC DTV standards include digital high-definition television, standard-definition television, data broadcasting, multichannel surround-sound audio, and satellite direct-to-home broadcasting.

The ATSC developed standards for digital television ( DTV ) that specify technologies for the transport, format, compression, and transmission of DTV in the U.S. ATSC DTV Standards developed, or in development currently, include digital high definition television ( HDTV ), standard definition television ( SDTV ), datacasting (the transmission of separate information streams that might allow, for example, someone watching a baseball game to choose a different camera angle, or someone watching a cooking show to view and download particular recipes), multichannel surround-sound audio, conditional access (methods, such as encryption or electronic locking systems, used to restrict service access to authorized users), and interactive services. For SDTV and HDTV, ATSC chose MPEG-2 for video and Dolby Digital for audio.

ATSC Mobile DTV includes a highly robust transmission system based on vestigial sideband (VSB) modulation coupled with a flexible and extensible IP based transport, efficient MPEG AVC (H.264) video and HE AAC v2 audio (ISO/IEC 14496-3) coding.