MPH (Mobile-Pedestrian-Handheld) was a mobile extension of the

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 ...

television standard jointly developed by Harris Corporation, LG Electronics, Inc. and its U.S. research subsidiary, Zenith Electronics. The MPH platform allowed local TV stations to deliver ATSC-compatible content to mobile and video devices such as mobile phones, portable media players, laptop computers, personal navigation devices and automobile-based "infotainment systems." The service is called "in-band" because local broadcasters are providing mobile TV services as part of their terrestrial transmission within the same, existing 6 MHz channel they use for their ATSC DTV programming. With the installation of an MPH exciter and signal encoding equipment, existing TV transmission systems would have transmitted a signal which could be received on "MPH-ready" devices. The system allowed the splitting of the 6 MHz, 19.4 Mbit/s of spectrum into a slice for a traditional DTV signal and a slice for MPH use, serving several types of user with a single DTV channel. The MPH system is a multiple-stream approach, with the main service stream for existing DTV and

HDTV High-definition television (HD or HDTV) describes a television system which provides a substantially higher image resolution than the previous generation of technologies. The term has been used since 1936; in more recent times, it refers to the g ...

services, and the MPH stream for one or more mobile,

pedestrian A pedestrian is a person traveling on foot, whether walking or running. In modern times, the term usually refers to someone walking on a road or pavement, but this was not the case historically. The meaning of pedestrian is displayed with ...

, and/or

handheld A mobile device (or handheld computer) is a computer small enough to hold and operate in the hand. Mobile devices typically have a flat LCD or OLED screen, a touchscreen interface, and digital or physical buttons. They may also have a physical ...

services. Key attributes of the MPH system were: *

Backward compatibility Backward compatibility (sometimes known as backwards compatibility) is a property of an operating system, product, or technology that allows for interoperability with an older legacy system, or with input designed for such a system, especially i ...

with existing ATSC

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 ...

transmission and receiving equipment * Capability to receive broadcast signals at high (mobile) speed with a single

antenna Antenna ( antennas or antennae) may refer to: Science and engineering * Antenna (radio), also known as an aerial, a transducer designed to transmit or receive electromagnetic (e.g., TV or radio) waves * Antennae Galaxies, the name of two collid ...

* Use of small handheld receivers without the need for multiple antennas * Power savings in handheld receivers * Flexibility in both data rates and

robustness Robustness is the property of being strong and healthy in constitution. When it is transposed into a system, it refers to the ability of tolerating perturbations that might affect the system’s functional body. In the same line ''robustness'' ca ...

* Data-rate

efficiency Efficiency is the often measurable ability to avoid wasting materials, energy, efforts, money, and time in doing something or in producing a desired result. In a more general sense, it is the ability to do things well, successfully, and without ...

* Use of advanced video and

audio coding An audio coding format (or sometimes audio compression format) is a content representation format for storage or transmission of digital audio (such as in digital television, digital radio and in audio and video files). Examples of audio coding f ...

The MPH standard was later combined with competing mobile ATSC proposals, to become

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 ...

, which remains the current standard.

References

* {{Citation , title = Harris Corporation, LG Electronics Announce In-Band Mobile DTV System... , url = http://www.harris.com/view_pressrelease.asp?act=lookup&pr_id=2105 , author = Harris Press Release , accessdate = 2007-04-05, April 3, 2007.
Harris Corporation MTV brochure
ATSC Quantized radio modulation modes Digital television