Welcome to HDTV
High Definition refers to a new way of sending programming information over the airwaves and into your TV. There are two types of TV display formats available. One is ATSC format, which originated from the Advanced Television Systems Committee. The other is NTSC format, which is named for the National Television System Committee. What makes your High Definition Television (HDTV) special is that it has tuners capable of receiving several types of signals: analog (in NTSC format) and digital (in ATSC format), cable (in NTSC and ATSC formats), and digital satellite and high definition satellite (coming from DIRECTV if you subscribe to DIRECTV® programming†). This TV makes receiving all types of signals seamless. Below is an example of how your HDTV can receive the different types of signals.
So why is it called High Definition?
DIRECTV | DIRECTV HD |
SATELLITE | SATELLITE |
TERRESTRIAL
ANTENNA
OR
TERRESTRIAL
ANTENNA
|
| TOWER SENDING | |
| CABLE TV | ANALOG AND/OR | |
HDTV | DIGITAL SIGNALS | ||
| |||
|
|
SATELLITE
DISH ANTENNA*
Parts of a Complete High Definition System
image. An HDTV normally has either 1080 or 720 rows and over 1,000 columns of pixels. This results in a display of over one million pixels. Your HDTV also has a wide screen, or “wide aspect ratio” of 16:9 as opposed to the common 4:3 ratio. It is normally capable of displaying both interlaced images (like today’s analog TVs) and progressive images (like a computer monitor).
What this all means is that while digital broadcasting will bring many new possibilities, only people with HDTVs like yours will actually be capable of realizing many of them. A wide aspect ratio, one million pixel resolution,
*The appearance of your satellite dish antenna may differ from that shown here. If your satellite dish antenna is round instead of oval, you can receive programming from only one DIRECTV satellite.
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