Opportunities and Challenges in the Terrestrial DTV Transition in US - From Consumers' Perspective

Digital television (DTV) can offer consumers with more programming choices and far superior image quality than analog television. However, the free over the-air (OTA) DTV broadcasting can suffer from certain reception degradation. The possible causes range from loss of video frame data (buffer overflow)due to the self-similarity in MPEG2 video, mismatched impedance, signal attenuation, multipaths, Radio Frequency Interference (RFI), etc. Some of the problems are caused by the limitations in the video coding method, MPEG2, which is adopted in the ATSC standard for OTA DTV broadcasting. Generally, these types of issues can only be resolved by equipment vendors with the application of new technologies. However, certain issues, such as mismatched impedance, signal attenuation, multipaths, and Ri can be overcome by consumers when some techniques are employed. In this paper, the possible causes for reception degradation are probed and certain techniques, such as spatial diversity technique are introduced to provide possible solutions.