ATSC Digital Television Standard

(ATSC - Advanced Television Systems Committee) The ATSC Digital Television Standard was recommended to be adopted as the Advanced TV broadcasting standard by the FCC Advisory Committee on Advanced Television Service on November 28, 1995. It covers the standard for HDTV (High Definition TV).

Video Format

The video scanning formats supported by the ATSC Digital Television Standard are shown in the following table.

Vertical Lines	Horizontal Pixels	Aspect Ratio	Picture Rate
1080	1920	16:9	60I 30P 24P
720	1280	16:9	60P 30P 24P
480	704	16:9 & 4:3	60I 60P 30P 24P
480	640	4:3	60I 60P 30P 24P

• The aspect ratio for HDTV is 16:9 as opposed to 4:3 in NTSC, PAL, and SECAM. (A 33% increase in horizontal dimension.)

• In the picture rate column, the "I" means interlaced scan, and the "P" means progressive (non-interlaced) scan.

• Both NTSC rates and integer rates are supported (i.e., 60.00, 59.94, 30.00, 29.97, 24.00, and 23.98).