Digital terrestrial television for Malaysia

Television is one of the most powerful components of information communication technology. It has the power to influence the public as well as educate and entertain them. As such, a lot of development in television engineering has taken place. Television has changed from black/white to colour. However, the international community could not accept a single colour TV standard and 3 different standards emerged i.e. NTSC, PAL and SECAM. All these standards are analogue and cannot meet the demands of the new millennium. Digital TV was developed to meet these demands, but again 3 different standards have emerged i.e., ATSC (Advanced Television System Committee) from USA, DVB-T (digital video broadcast - terrestrial) from Europe and ISDB (integrated services digital broadcast) from Japan. The paper analyses all 3 digital standards from a Malaysian perspective and recommends DVB-T as the digital standard.