Digital Television, 2nd Edition

Introduction

At the end of the 1980s, the possibility of broadcasting fully digital pictures to the consumer was still seen as a faraway prospect, and one that was definitely not technically or economically realistic before the turn of the century. The main reason for this was the very high bit-rate required for the transmission of digitized 525- or 625-line live video pictures (from 108 to 270 Mb/s without compression). Another reason was that, at that time, it seemed more urgent and important – at least in the eyes of some politicians and technocrats – to improve the quality of the TV picture, and huge amounts of money were invested by the three main world players (first Japan, then Europe, and finally the USA) in order to develop Improved ...