Development of high compression HDTV digital codec

A new digital codec is described, which can transmit 1125/60 HDTV signals at a bit-rate of 15 to 45 Mbps in order to cover a wide range of applications such as SNG, distribution or contribution. To achieve satisfactory picture quality at such low bit rates, including high quality stereo sounds, a data channel, a forward error correction code, and new advanced coding techniques are introduced into a conventional motion compensated interframe and intrafield adaptive DCT coding scheme. By using these key techniques, this system provides a significantly better coding performance than MPEG-2. In order to verify the transmission performance over an actual transmission link, field trials were carried out between Japan and the USA, which demonstrates that this codec is suitable for practical use in a wide range of HDTV applications.<>