Hitachi 26HDL52 DTV Usage, ATSCAdvanced Television System Committee Introduction

DTV USAGE

ATSC(Advanced Television System Committee) INTRODUCTION

Terrestrial broadcast is a traditional way of watching TV programs, simply by installing an outdoor YAGI antenna or an indoor rabbit ear antenna, plugging it into the TV set’s tuner, tuning channel, then you can enjoy watching the programs. However, they are all so called “analog TV”.

In recent years, “digital TV” arises and most countries’ governments have begun to mandate a TV Transition from the old analog TV broadcast system to digital TV broadcast system. Digital TV brings viewer greater entertainment in terms of a noise free High Definition picture quality and Dolby AC-3 sound effect. 16:9 video format gives a wider view of the same program compared with traditional 4:3 format. In the near future terrestrial data broadcast will create a complete digitized world in every family. Many terrestrial TV broadcaster at this moment are delivering digital TV programs, when the time of government mandated transition deadline comes, all the analog TV transmissions have to give way to digital, which makes the ZAT series digital terrestrial HDTV receivers a wise investment now.

Digital TV programs are broadcasted on both VHF and UHF radio frequency bands. Traditional analog TV transmission uses one radio frequency channel for carrying one TV station’s programs, in the digital TV transmission one radio frequency channel can carry up to four more TV station’s programs. For instance, the original analog channel CBS you used to watch now may have become

2-1,2-2,2-3,2-4 when it’s broadcasted in digital, here we call 2 as the major channel and -1, -2, -3 and -4 are sub-channels. These four sub-channels usually come from the same TV station and show four different programs at the same time.

Digital TV signals are transmitted in either Free-to-Air (FTA) mode or Pay-per-View (PPV) mode. FTA signals can be received free by anyone with MPEG 2–ATSC compliant digital terrestrial receiver, such as the ZAT series, whereas the PPV programs can only be received by paying an access fee to the broadcaster and using a Digital receiver incorporating compatible conditional access system. The receiver allows you to watch HDTV, EDTV and SDTV digital TV programs.

*HDTV stands for High Definition Television; its common video formats are “1920 x 1080 interlaced” or “1280 x 720 progressive”. *EDTV stands for Enhanced Definition Television; its common video format is “720 x 480 progressive”.

*SDTV stands for Standard Definition Television; its common video format is “720 x 480 interlaced”.

ATSC RECEIVER FUNCTIONS

The Digital Terrestrial HDTV Receiver opens up a new world of free-to-air terrestrial HDTV and SDTV programming. The receiver can receive channels from both VHF band and UHF band TV station’s signals. All the major terrestrial free-to-air station numbers currently available in your area are listed in the on-screen menu. To watch the channel simply by selecting the channel number and you will be accessing a wide range of local high quality digital programming.

The receiver is fully ATSC / MPEG-2 (digital video broadcast-terrestrial) compliant, delivering High Definition crystal-sharp video and Dolby AC-3 sound. It supports a radio signal range from 50-860 MHz, so can be easily programmed for all the channels within the VHF and UHF frequency bands. It can receive major and sub-channels containing both video and audio programs.

These receivers have the capability of receiving hundreds of channels simply by selecting alternate TV channel frequencies in your area. To find out the specific digital TV services available to you, please contact your local service provider or log onto the website “http://www.antennaweb.org”. With the wide range of features and terrestrial HDTV programming opened up to you by ZAT series digital terrestrial receivers, prepare yourself for a new era in home theater entertainment.

38