[...]... television appeared: digital cable television, digital terrestrial television, and, more recently, digital television via the telephone subscriber line (IPTV over ADSL) These developments will bring about the extinction of analog television in Europe around the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, with the pace of the transition from analog to digital varying by country On the other hand,... added within the video spectrum, modulated by the reduced bandwidth chrominance signals, thus giving a new composite signal called the CVBS (Color Video Baseband Signal; see Fig 1.4) In order not to disturb the luminance and the black and white receivers, this carrier had to be placed in the highest part of the video spectrum and had to stay within the limits of the existing video bandwidth (4.2 MHz... introduction and an earlier development of digital TV than anticipated It replaces frequency division multiplexing of luminance, chrominance, and sound (bandwidth sharing) of composite standards by a time division multiplexing (time sharing) It is designed to be compatible with normal (4:3) and wide-screen (16:9) formats and can be considered in some aspects an intermediate step on the route to all -digital. .. analog HDTV (HD-MAC), and xii Introduction created the European Launching Group (ELG) in order to define and standardize a digital TV broadcasting system This gave birth in 1993 to the DVB project (Digital Video Broadcasting), based on the “main profile at main level” (MP@ML) of the international MPEG-2 compression standard MPEG-2 is downward-compatible with MPEG-1 and has provisions for a compatible... all -digital television standards and services 13 Color television: a review of current standards 0.5 V PAL burst Video Clock reference + 14 information bits 11 μs 27.4 μs 44.5 μs 19.5 μs Figure 1.8 View of line 23 of a PAL+ signal (WSS bits) Note 1.1 This slight change in line and field frequencies was introduced in order to minimize the visual effect of beat frequency between sound (4.50 MHz) and. .. transmissions 15 This page intentionally left blank Digitization of video signals 2.1 2 Why digitize video signals? For a number of years, video professionals at television studios have been using various digital formats, such as D1 (components) and D2 (composite), for recording and editing video signals In order to ease the interoperability of equipment and international program exchange, the former CCIR (Comité... television that is transportable virtually everywhere xiv Color television: a review of current standards 1 Let us begin with a bit of history 1.1 Monochrome TV basics It should be borne in mind that all current TV standards in use today are derived from the “black and white” TV standards started in the 1940s and 1950s, which have defined their framework The first attempts at electromechanical television... (approximately in the ratio 60/50) and, consequently, a wider bandwidth in order to 4 Digital Television obtain well-balanced horizontal and vertical resolutions The following characteristics were defined: • 625 lines, interlaced scanning (two fields of 312.5 lines); • field frequency, 50 Hz; • line frequency, 15,625 Hz (50 × 312.5); • video bandwidth, 5.0 MHz; negative video modulation; • FM sound carrier... that, at that time, it seemed more urgent and important—at least in the eyes of some politicians and technocrats—to improve the quality of the TV picture, and huge amounts of money were invested by the three main world players (first Japan, then Europe, and finally the U.S.A.) in order to develop Improved Definition TeleVision (IDTV) and High Definition TeleVision systems (HDTV), with vertical resolutions... 2.1) has standardized conditions of digitization (recommendation CCIR-601) and interfacing (recommendation CCIR-656) of digital video signals in component form (Y, Cr , Cb in 4:2:2 format) The main advantages of these digital formats are that they allow multiple copies to be made without any degradation in quality, and the creation of special effects not otherwise possible in analog format, and they . acquisition and development of the former Canal+ Italia. In the last years of the twentieth century, other forms of digital tele- vision appeared: digital cable television, digital terrestrial television, and, . electronics and some knowledge of conventional analog television (a reminder of the basic principles of existing television standards is presented for those who require it) and for those with a basic digital. (HD-MAC), and xii Introduction created the European Launching Group (ELG) in order to define and standardize a digital TV broadcasting system. This gave birth in 1993 to the DVB project (Digital Video