Linking Television To The Internet: Eia-746 And Beyond

In 1997, the Television Data Systems Subcommittee (TDSS) within the Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association (CEMA) approved EIA-746, a standard for transmitting Internet Uniform Resource Locators (URLs), and related information, within NTSC video signals. EIA-746 builds on EIA-608, the standard for encoding closed captioning information within television broadcasts. The first programs to use this standard were broadcast in the United States in November 1997, on a test basis, with national commercial broadcasts beginning in January 1998.