Below are the published

ATSC standards Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) standards are an American set of standards for digital television transmission over terrestrial, cable and satellite networks. It is largely a replacement for the analog NTSC standard and, like that ...

for ATSC digital television service, issued by the

Advanced Television Systems Committee The Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) is an international nonprofit organization developing technical standards for digital terrestrial television and data broadcasting. ATSC's 120-plus member organizations represent the broadcast, ...

. *A/49: Ghost Canceling Reference Signal for

NTSC The first American standard for analog television broadcast was developed by National Television System Committee (NTSC)National Television System Committee (1951–1953), Report and Reports of Panel No. 11, 11-A, 12–19, with Some supplement ...

(for

adjacent-channel interference Adjacent-channel interference (ACI) is interference caused by extraneous power from a signal in an adjacent channel. ACI may be caused by inadequate filtering (such as incomplete filtering of unwanted modulation products in FM systems), improper t ...

co-channel interference Co-channel interference or CCI is crosstalk from two different radio transmitters using the same channel. Co-channel interference can be caused by many factors from weather conditions to administrative and design issues. Co-channel interference ...

with analog NTSC stations nearby) *A/52B:

audio data compression In information theory, data compression, source coding, or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation. Any particular compression is either lossy or lossless. Lossless compression ...

(Dolby AC-3 and

E-AC-3 Dolby Digital Plus, also known as Enhanced AC-3 (and commonly abbreviated as DDP, DD+, E-AC-3 or EC-3) is a digital audio compression scheme developed by Dolby Labs for transport and storage of multi-channel digital audio. It is a successor to D ...

) *A/53E: "ATSC Digital Television Standard" (the primary document governing the standard) *A/55: "Program Guide for Digital Television" (now

deprecate In several fields, especially computing, deprecation is the discouragement of use of some terminology, feature, design, or practice, typically because it has been superseded or is no longer considered efficient or safe, without completely removing ...

d in favor of A/65 PSIP) *A/56: "System Information for Digital Television" (now

d in favor of A/65 PSIP) *A/57A: "Content Identification and Labeling for ATSC Transport" (for assigning a unique digital number to each

episode An episode is a narrative unit within a larger dramatic work or documentary production, such as a series intended for radio, television or streaming consumption. The noun ''episode'' is derived from the Greek term ''epeisodion'' (), meaning t ...

of each

TV show A television show – or simply TV show – is any content produced for viewing on a television set which can be broadcast via over-the-air, satellite, or cable, excluding breaking news, advertisements, or trailers that are typically placed betw ...

, to assist DVRs) *A/63: "Standard for Coding 25/50 Hz Video" (for use with PAL and SECAM-originated programming) *A/64A "Transmission Measurement and Compliance for Digital Television" *A/65C: "

Program and System Information Protocol The Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP) is the MPEG (a video and audio industry group) and privately defined program-specific information originally defined by General Instrument for the DigiCipher 2 system and later extended for the ...

for Terrestrial Broadcast and Cable" (PSIP includes

virtual channel In most telecommunications organizations, a virtual channel is a method of remapping the ''program number'' as used in H.222 Program Association Tables and Program Mapping Tables to a channel number that can be entered via digits on a receiver's ...

electronic program guide Electronic programming guides (EPGs) and interactive programming guides (IPGs) are menu-based systems that provide users of television, radio and other media applications with continuously updated menus that display scheduling information for ...

s, and

content rating A content rating (also known as maturity rating) rates the suitability of TV shows, movies, comic books, or video games to this primary targeted audience. A content rating usually places a media source into one of a number of different categories, ...

s) *A/68: "PSIP Standard for

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

" (defines use of

Chinese character Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the Written Chinese, writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are k ...

s via

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...

3.0) *A/69: recommended practices for implementing PSIP at a TV station *A/70A: "Conditional Access System for Terrestrial Broadcast" *A/71: "ATSC Parameterized Services Standard" *A/72: "Video System Characteristics of AVC in the ATSC Digital Television System" (implementing

H.264 Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also referred to as H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10, is a video compression standard based on block-oriented, motion-compensated coding. It is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression, and distr ...

MPEG-4 MPEG-4 is a group of international standards for the compression of digital audio and visual data, multimedia systems, and file storage formats. It was originally introduced in late 1998 as a group of audio and video coding formats and related tec ...

as well as MVC for 3D television) *A/76: "

Programming Metadata Communication Protocol The Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP) is the MPEG (a video and audio industry group) and privately defined program-specific information originally defined by General Instrument for the DigiCipher 2 system and later extended for the AT ...

" (

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...

-based PMCP maintains PSIP

metadata Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...

though a TV station's

airchain In broadcast engineering for radio or television, the airchain or transmission chain (UK) (sometimes air chain (US) or just chain (UK)) is the path or route an audio or video signal takes on its way through a radio station or television station. ...

) *A/79: "Conversion of ATSC Signals for Distribution to

Viewers" ( recommended practice, issued February 2009) *A/80: "Modulation and Coding Requirements for Digital TV (DTV) Applications Over Satellite" (ATSC-S) *A/81: "Direct-to-Home Satellite Broadcast Standard" (not yet implemented by any services) *A/82: "Automatic Transmitter Power Control (ATPC) Data Return Link (DRL) Standard" *A/85: "Techniques for Establishing and Maintaining Audio Loudness for Digital Television" *A/90: "Data Broadcast Standard" (for

datacasting Datacasting (data broadcasting) is the broadcasting of data over a wide area via radio waves. It most often refers to supplemental information sent by television stations along with digital terrestrial television (DTT), but may also be applied ...

) *A/92: "Delivery of IP Multicast Sessions over Data Broadcast Standard" (for

IP multicast IP multicast is a method of sending Internet Protocol (IP) datagrams to a group of interested receivers in a single transmission. It is the IP-specific form of multicast and is used for streaming media and other network applications. It uses speci ...

ing) *A/93: "Synchronized/Asynchronous Trigger Standard" *A/94: "ATSC Data Application Reference Model" *A/95: "

Transport Stream File System Transport (in British English), or transportation (in American English), is the intentional Motion, movement of humans, animals, and cargo, goods from one location to another. Mode of transport, Modes of transport include aviation, air, land ...

Standard" (TSFS is a special

file system In computing, file system or filesystem (often abbreviated to fs) is a method and data structure that the operating system uses to control how data is stored and retrieved. Without a file system, data placed in a storage medium would be one larg ...

for

downloading In computer networks, download means to ''receive'' data from a remote system, typically a server such as a web server, an FTP server, an email server, or other similar system. This contrasts with uploading, where data is ''sent to'' a remote ...

computer file A computer file is a computer resource for recording data in a computer storage device, primarily identified by its file name. Just as words can be written to paper, so can data be written to a computer file. Files can be shared with and transfe ...

s) *A/96: "ATSC Interaction Channel Protocols" (

interactive TV Interactive television is a form of media convergence, adding data services to traditional television technology. It has included on-demand delivery of content, online shopping, and viewer polls. Interactive TV is an example of how new information ...

) *A/97: "Software Data Download Service" (used by

UpdateTV Qterics (formerly Broadcast Data Corporation and later UpdateLogic Incorporated ) is a company which has developed a system for datacasting firmware upgrades to digital television devices. It appears that UpdateTV is the only product the company ...

for

upgrade Upgrading is the process of replacing a product with a newer version of the same product. In computing and consumer electronics an upgrade is generally a replacement of hardware, software or firmware with a newer or better version, in order to ...

s and

software patch A patch is a set of changes to a computer program or its supporting data designed to update, fix, or improve it. This includes fixing security vulnerabilities and other bugs, with such patches usually being called bugfixes or bug fixes. Patches ...

es in

ATSC tuner An ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee) tuner, often called an ATSC receiver or HDTV tuner, is a type of television tuner that allows reception of digital television (DTV) television channels that use ATSC standards, as transmitted by te ...

s) *A/98: "System Renewability Message Transport" *A/99: "Carriage Of Legacy TV Data Services" (for former analog supplemental services that used the

vertical blanking interval In a raster scan display, the vertical blanking interval (VBI), also known as the vertical interval or VBLANK, is the time between the end of the final visible line of a frame or field and the beginning of the first visible line of the next fram ...

lines, such as

closed captioning Closed captioning (CC) and subtitling are both processes of displaying text on a television, video screen, or other visual display to provide additional or interpretive information. Both are typically used as a transcription of the audio por ...

and

teletext A British Ceefax football index page from October 2009, showing the three-digit page numbers for a variety of football news stories Teletext, or broadcast teletext, is a standard for displaying text and rudimentary graphics on suitably equipp ...

) *A/100: "DTV Application Software Environment - Level 1" (DASE-1) *A/101: "

Advanced Common Application Platform Globally Executable MHP (GEM) is a DVB specification of a Java based middleware for TV broadcast receivers, IPTV terminals and Blu-ray players. GEM is an ETSI standard (ETSI TS 102 819, ETSI TS 102 728) and an ITU "Recommendation” (ITU-T J.202). ...

" (ACAP) *A/103:2014: "Non-Real-Time Delivery" *A/104: "ATSC 3D-TV Terrestrial Broadcasting" *A/105:2015: "Interactive Services Standard" *A/106:2015: "ATSC Security and Service Protection Standard" *A/107:2015: "ATSC 2.0 Standard" *A/110A: "Synchronization Standard for Distributed Transmission" (

single-frequency network A single-frequency network or SFN is a broadcast network where several transmitters simultaneously send the same signal over the same frequency channel. Analog AM and FM radio broadcast networks as well as digital broadcast networks can operate ...

s) *A/112:

E-VSB E-VSB or Enhanced VSB is an optional enhancement to the original ATSC Standards that use the 8VSB modulation system used for transmission of digital television. It is intended for improving reception where signals are weaker, including fringe re ...

(Enhanced Vestigal Sideband) *A/153:

ATSC-M/H ATSC-M/H (''Advanced Television Systems Committee - Mobile/Handheld'') is a U.S. standard for mobile digital TV that allows TV broadcasts to be received by mobile devices. ATSC-M/H is a mobile TV extension to preexisting terrestrial TV broadcasti ...

In 2004, the main ATSC standard was amended to support Enhanced ATSC (A/112); this transmission mode is backwardly compatible with the original 8-Bit Vestigal Sideband modulation scheme, but provides much better error correction.

for

mobile TV Mobile television is television watched on a small handheld or mobile device. It includes service delivered via mobile phone networks, received free-to-air via terrestrial television stations, or via satellite broadcast. Regular broadcast stand ...

has been approved and added to some stations, though it is known that it uses

instead of

MPEG-2 MPEG-2 (a.k.a. H.222/H.262 as was defined by the ITU) is a standard for "the generic video coding format, coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of Lossy compression, lossy video compression and ...

for encoding, and behaves as an MPEG-4-encoded subchannel, inheriting 8VSB from the remainder of the channel.

ATSC 3.0

ATSC 3.0 ATSC 3.0 is a major version of the ATSC standards for television broadcasting created by the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC). The standards are designed to offer support for newer technologies, including HEVC for video channels of u ...

is a non-backwards-compatible version of ATSC being developed (as of May 18, 2016) that uses

OFDM In telecommunications, orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) is a type of digital transmission and a method of encoding digital data on multiple carrier frequencies. OFDM has developed into a popular scheme for wideband digital commun ...

instead of

8VSB 8VSB is the modulation method used for broadcast in the ATSC standards, ATSC digital television standard. ATSC and 8VSB modulation is used primarily in North America; in contrast, the COFDM#DVB-T, DVB-T standard uses COFDM. A modulation method ...

and a much newer video codec (instead of ATSC 1 and 2's

). At the time of this article's writing, it has several candidates and one finalized standard. On March 28, 2016, the Bootstrap component of ATSC 3.0 (System Discovery and Signalling) was upgraded from candidate standard to finalized standard. On May 4, 2016, the Audio Codec component of ATSC 3.0 was elevated to candidate standard, with two finalists remaining:

Dolby AC-4 Dolby AC-4 is an audio compression technology developed by Dolby Laboratories. Dolby AC-4 bitstreams can contain audio channels and/or audio objects. Dolby AC-4 has been adopted by the DVB project and standardized by the ETSI. History Its develop ...

and

MPEG-H MPEG-H is a group of international standards under development by the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). It has various "parts" – each of which can be considered a separate standard. These include a media transport protocol standard, ...

Audio Alliance format from

Fraunhofer IIS The Fraunhofer Society (german: Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V., lit=Fraunhofer Society for the Advancement of Applied Research) is a German research organization with 76institutes spread throughout Germany ...

Qualcomm Qualcomm () is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, and incorporated in Delaware. It creates semiconductors, software, and services related to wireless technology. It owns patents critical to the 5G, 4 ...

and

Technicolor SA Vantiva SA, formerly Technicolor SA, Thomson SARL, and Thomson Multimedia, is a French multinational corporation that provides creative services and technology products for the communication, media and entertainment industries. Vantiva's headq ...

. A third entry from DTS named DTS:X (a successor to

DTS-HD DTS-HD Master Audio (DTS-HD MA; known as DTS++ before 2004) is a multi-channel, lossless audio codec developed by DTS as an extension of the lossy DTS Coherent Acoustics codec (DTS CA; usually itself referred to as just DTS). Rather than being ...

) was withdrawn before the standard was upgraded to candidate status. On September 8, 2016, the Physical Layer Download (

) component of ATSC 3.0 was upgraded from candidate standard to finalized standard. On October 5, 2016, the Link Layer Protocol Standard (A/330) was elevated from Candidate to final standard, along with the Audio Watermark Emission Standard (A/334) and Video Watermark Emission Standard (A/335). ATSC Technology Group 3 (TG3) members have also begun voting on elevating the following Candidate Standards to Proposed Standard status (the final step before becoming an approved standard): Service Announcement (A/322), Service Usage Reporting (A/333) and Captions and Subtitles (A/343). TG3 members also are voting to elevate Security (A/360) to Candidate Standard status, joining Schedule and Studio-to-Transmitter Link Standard (A/324), which was recently elevated. On March 30, 2016, A/324 (Schedule and Studio-to-Transmitter Link) was upgraded from Proposed to Candidate Standard. On January 3, 2017, ATSC announced the updated status of its standards, in time for its debut at the

Consumer Electronics Show CES (; formerly an initialism for Consumer Electronics Show) is an annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). Held in January at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Winchester, Nevada, United States, the event typi ...

Las Vegas Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vegas ...

. As a result, this update, Captions and Subtitles (A/343) was upgraded from Candidate to Finalized Standard; Security (A-360), Lab Performance Test Plan (A-325) and Field Test Plan (A-326) were upgraded to Candidate Standard from "Under Consideration". By March 7, 2017, ATSC announced a further update to the status of its standards, with the following as Finalized: A/321 (System Discovery and Signaling); A/322 Physical Layer Protocl (COFDM); A/326 (Field Test Plan ecommended Practice; A/330 (Link Layer Protocol); A/333 (Service Usage Reporting); A/334 (Audio Watermark Emission); A/335 (Video Watermark Emission); A/336 (Content Recovery in Redistribution Scenarios TSC 3.0 over Cable and Satellite; A/342 Part 1 (Audio Common Elements); A/342 Part 2 (Audio: Dolby AC-4 System); A/342 Part 3 (Audio MPEG-H System); and A/343 (Captions and Subtitles). The following are Proposed Standards: A/325 (Lab Performance Test Plan ecommended Practice; A/332 (Service Announcement); A/338 (Companion Device); A/341 (Video - H.265/HEVC). The following are Candidate Standards: A/300 (ATSC 3.0 System); A/324 (Scheduler/Studio-to-Transmitter Link); A/331 (Signalling, Delivery, Sync Error Protection); A/337 (Application Signalling); A/344 (Interactive Content); A/360 (Security and Service Protection). The following is a Draft Standard: A/323 (Physical Layer Uplink/Downlink). ;Structure/ATSC 3.0 System Layers # Bootstrap: System Discovery and Signalling # Physical Layer: Transmission (

) # Link Layer Protocols: IP, MMT # Presentation: Audio and Video standards (to be determined),

Ultra HD Ultra-high-definition television (also known as Ultra HD television, Ultra HD, UHDTV, UHD and Super Hi-Vision) today includes 4K UHD and 8K UHD, which are two digital video formats with an aspect ratio of 16:9. These were first proposed b ...

with High Definition and

standard-definition Standard-definition television (SDTV, SD, often shortened to standard definition) is a television system which uses a resolution that is not considered to be either high or enhanced definition. "Standard" refers to it being the prevailing sp ...

multicast, Immersive Audio # Applications: Screen is a web page ;Finalized Standards: *A/200: Regional Service Availability (finalized on July 8, 2020) *A/300:

*A/321: System Discovery and Signalling *A/322: Physical Layer Download *A/323: Dedicated Return Channel for ATSC 3.0 (Physical Layer Upload/Download (Uplink/Downlink)) (accepted on 2 November 2017, finalized on December 7, 2018) *A/324: Schedule and Studio-to-Transmitter Link (finalized on 5 January 2018) *A/325: Recommended Practice: TG3/S32 Lab Performance Test Plan *A/326: Field Test Plan (Recommended Practice) *A/330: Link Layer Protocol *A/331: Signaling, Delivery, Synchronization, and Error Protection (finalized on 6 December 2017) *A/332: Service Announcement *A/333: Service Usage Reporting *A/334: Audio Watermark Emission *A/335: Video Watermark Emission *A/336: Content Recovery in Redistribution Scenarios *A/337: Application Signaling (finalized on January 2, 2018) *A/338: Companion Device *A/339:2017, “ATSC Recommended Practice: Audio Watermark Modification and Erasure” *A/341: Video Standard (

H.265 H is the eighth letter of the Latin alphabet. H may also refer to: Musical symbols * H number, Harry Halbreich reference mechanism for music by Honegger and Martinů * H, B (musical note) * H, B major People * H. (noble) (died after 12 ...

, Scalable HEVC with HDR) *A/341:2018, “Video – HEVC, With Amendments No. 1 and No. 2″ (Approved January 24, 2018. Amendment No. 1 approved March 9, 2018. Amendment No. 2 approved March 12, 2018, finalized on February 14, 2019) *A/342: Audio Standard (composed of the following three parts) *A/341 Amendment – 2094-40 (HEVC Video Codec, Finalized on September 19, 2021) *A/342 Part 1: Audio Common Elements *A/342 Part 2: AC-4 System *A/342 Part 3: MPEG-H AA System (declared the audio standard for ATSC 3.0 in

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...

) *A/343: Captions and Subtitles *A/344: Application Runtime Environment Standard (apps for advanced televisions) (finalized December 18, 2017) *A/360: Security and Service Protection (encryption for broadcasters) (finalized January 9, 2018) ;Proposed Standards: ;Candidate Standards: *A/331:2021: Signaling, Delivery, Synchronization, and Error Protection (Most Recent Document, approved on December 9, 2021 *A/344:2021: Interactive Content (Most Recent Document, approved November 24, 2021) *A/345: Personalization ;Draft Standards: ;Under Consideration - Working Drafts and Recommended Practices: *A/327: Guidelines for the Physical Layer Protocol (Most Recent Document Approved January 25, 2021) *A/350: Guide to the Link-Layer Protocol (Most Recent Document Approved: July 19, 2019) *A/351: Techniques for Signaling, Delivery and Synchronization (Most Recent Document Approved: February 15, 2021) *A/361: Security and Content Protection (Most Recent Document Approved: December 10, 2019) *A/362: Digital Rights Management (DRM) (Most Recent Document Approved: January 17, 2020) *A/370: Conversion of ATSC 3.0 Services for Redistribution (Most Recent Document Approved: December 11, 2019) *A/380: Haptics for ATSC 3.0 (Most Recent Document Approved: February 3, 2021)

References

External links

ATSC standards
{{DEFAULTSORT:ATSC standards list *Standards Digital television High-definition television

MPEG Television lists Television technology