Before buying your new hdtv set, you have to become somewhat familiar with its basic technology and function. (How else are you going to be able to answer the questions posed in Part 1?).
The first step in knowing the essentials you need to consider is to understand the basic structure of hdtv, how it works, and some knowledge of the future of hdtv so you don't buy yesterday's technology today!
What is HDTV?
HD stands for "high definition", and it is the new standard of television viewing. HDTV is actually part of the Digital Television (DTV) specifications brought by the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC). The ATSC has defined eighteen different transmission formats, six of which are considered ' High Definition ' because they are an astonishingdevelopment and advance over the resolution quality of a television broadcast.
HDTV has 1125 lines of horizontal resolution in comparison to 525 lines in the NTSC analog television broadcast signals. Thus, HDTV carries over five times the video information compared to previous NTSC analog TV signals. In layman's terms, there is more information shown in a similar area resulting in increased resolution ' or ' increased detail in the picture quality.
A Brief History of HDTV
Although HDTV has a very short history, it has been influential in the transformation of digital home entertainment space. The credit goes to the satellite TV service providers who primarily created the demand for HDTV.
It all started almost 15 years ago in 1987, when the FCC (TheFederal Communications Commission) issued a rule stating that that HDTV standards had to be backwards-compatible with existing NTSC service. Another way of thinking of this is that any new signal format had to be able to be received and displayed on older color sets and even older standards set for black & white television sets.
However, later in 1990, General Instrument Corporation proposed an all-digital transmission system and broadcast standards. By the end of 1990, four serious contenders emerged in the United States: Zenith HDTV, ATRC, AT & T, and MIT. These organizations announced their entry into digital HDTV market. It did not take long to realize that there had to be amicable standards established and that it would expensive to develop a system from the groundup. In 1993, an alliance was formed between several members: AT & T, GE, MIT, Phillips, Sarnoff, Thomson, and Zenith.
Their agreement became a mutually beneficial coalition. They were to take the best features from each of their four preliminary HDTV system designs and develop a common standard for the HDTV broadcast system. They successfully tested it in 1995 and the FCC set it as the HDTV standards that we have today.
Next-How exactly does HDTV differ from the old analog system and what makes it work?
HDTV-2-The Basics and History of HDTV Interested This: