Technical Performance of Community Antenna Television Systems

There is a growing interest in technical performance specifications for Community Antenna Television (CATV) systems on the part of system operators, manufacturers, and governmental regulatory bodies. There is at present no accepted standard for such operations. This paper outlines the major elements involved in adequate specifications. Numerical performance standards are suggested in some cases; in others, more work appears necessary to develop suitable measuring techniques and to determine the correlation between subjective evaluation of picture quality and measurable video signal characteristics. An Appendix provides a concise tabulation of suggested minimum performance specifications.