Advanced TV in the USA

The Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) is the forum which has proposed the new television standards for North America. The ATSC is convened by the US National Association of Broadcasters, and has members from all organisations concerned with television broadcasting in the North American continent. Besides recommending new technical standards for studio production, considerable efforts have been applied to the transmission aspects of new and advanced TV systems, particularly because of the lack of available spectrum for terrestrial broadcasting. The ATSC has now formally submitted its digital television standard to the FCC for ratification. The ATSC TV standard uses MPEG-2 Main Profile for video bit rate reduction, AC-3 for audio bit rate reduction, MPEG-2 Transport Stream specification, 8-level VSB for RF emission, and 16-level VSB for cable TV transmissions. The plans for introducing ATV in the USA are based on supplementary analogue NTSC television services broadcast at VHF, with HDTV programmes simulcast at UHF.