PDTV is an

abbreviation An abbreviation (from Latin ''brevis'', meaning ''short'') is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method. It may consist of a group of letters or words taken from the full version of the word or phrase; for example, the word ''abbrevia ...

short for ''Pure Digital Television''. Often seen as part of the filename of TV shows shared through

P2P P2P may refer to: * Pay to play, where money is exchanged for services * Peer-to-peer, a distributed application architecture in computing or networking ** List of P2P protocols * Phenylacetone, an organic compound commonly known as P2P * Poin ...

, The Scene, and

FTP The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and data ...

servers on the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

. In this case, PDTV refers not to container, bitrate or dimensions of the video, but the digital nature of the capture source. Non Scene European rippers often use the label DVBRip or ''DVB-rip'' to specify a purely digital rip of a

Digital Video Broadcast Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) is a set of international open standards for digital television. DVB standards are maintained by the DVB Project, an international industry consortium, and are published by a Joint Technical Committee (JTC) o ...

(DVB), however all Scene groups use standardized labeling. ''PDTV'' encompasses a broad array of capture methods and sources, but generally it involves the capture of SD or non- HD digital television broadcasts without any

analog-to-digital conversion In electronics, an analog-to-digital converter (ADC, A/D, or A-to-D) is a system that converts an analog signal, such as a sound picked up by a microphone or light entering a digital camera, into a digital signal. An ADC may also provi ...

, instead relying on directly ripping

MPEG The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is an alliance of working groups established jointly by International Organization for Standardization, ISO and International Electrotechnical Commission, IEC that sets standards for media coding, includ ...

streams. PDTV sources can be captured by a variety of digital TV tuner cards from a digital feed such as ClearQAM unencrypted cable,

Digital Terrestrial Television Digital terrestrial television (DTTV or DTT, or DTTB with "broadcasting") is a technology for terrestrial television in which land-based (terrestrial) television stations broadcast television content by radio waves to televisions in consumers' ...

or other satellite sources. Just as with

Freeview Freeview may refer to: * Freeview (Australia), the marketing name for the digital terrestrial television platform in Australia * Freeview (New Zealand), a digital satellite and digital terrestrial television platform in New Zealand *Freeview (UK), ...

(DVB-T) in the United Kingdom,

broadcast television Broadcast television systems (or terrestrial television systems outside the US and Canada) are the encoding or formatting systems for the transmission and reception of terrestrial television signals. Analog television systems were standardized b ...

in the United States has no barriers to PDTV capture. Hardware such as the

HDHomeRun HDHomeRun is a network-attached digital television tuner box, produced by the company SiliconDust USA, Inc. Overview Unlike standard set-top box (or set-top unit) appliances, HDHomeRun does not have a video output that connects directly to the u ...

when connected to an

ATSC 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 ...

(Antenna) or unencrypted ClearQAM cable feed allows lossless digital capture of MPEG-2 streams (Pure Digital Television), without monthly fees or other restrictions normally implemented by a

Set-top box A set-top box (STB), also colloquially known as a cable box and historically television decoder, is an information appliance device that generally contains a TV-tuner input and displays output to a television set and an external source of sign ...

. Although different from the

analog hole The analog hole (also known as the analog loophole or analog gap) is a perceived fundamental and inevitable vulnerability in copy protection schemes for noninteractive works in digital formats which can be exploited to duplicate copy-protected wo ...

, Pure Digital Television capture imposes no technological restriction on what is done with the stream; playback,

Mash-Ups Mashup may refer to: * Mashup (culture), the rearrangement of spliced parts of musical pieces as part of a subculture * Mashup (education), combining various forms of data and media by a teacher or student in an instructional setting * Mashup (mus ...

and even recompression/pirated distribution are possible without the permission of the rights holder. A publisher of

fan-made Fan labor, also called fan works, are the creative activities engaged in by fans, primarily those of various media properties or musical groups. These activities can include creation of written works (fiction, fan fiction and review literature), ...

DVD releases also uses the name PDTV, but with no connection to the more common usage explained above. The "PD" in this case refers to "planet dust" with an additional connotation of Public Domain, even though the material offered is more often the video equivalent of

abandonware Abandonware is a product, typically software, ignored by its owner and manufacturer, and for which no official support is available. Within an intellectual rights contextual background, abandonware is a software (or hardware) sub-case of the g ...

as opposed to anything where copyright has actually expired. Whereas PDTV content online (as described above) is indiscriminate in terms of copyright, physical DVD releases from PDTV only exist to supply fans with material not officially published to the

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

format. As of 2018, the latter PDTV has undergone somewhat of a "rebranding", shifting its focus slightly to further emphasize preservation of VHS, Beta and Laserdisc content. The meaning of the "PD" part of its name thus becoming more associated with "physical disc" rather than anything else.

References

{{Forms of pirated film releases Film and video technology Digital television Video Multimedia File sharing Warez