Below are the published ATSC standards 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 NTSC (from National Television System Committee) is the first American standard for analog television, published and adopted in 1941. In 1961, it was assigned the designation System M. It is also known as EIA standard 170. In 1953, a second ...

(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), improp ...

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 interferen ...

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

deprecate Deprecation is the discouragement of use of something human-made, such as a term, feature, design, or practice. Typically something is deprecated because it is claimed to be inferior compared to other options available. Something may be deprec ...

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 serial (radio and television), series intended for radio, television or Streaming media, streaming consumption. Etymology The noun ''episode'' is ...

of each

TV show A television show, TV program (), or simply a TV show, is the general reference to any content produced for viewing on a television set that is broadcast via over-the-air, satellite, and cable, or distributed digitally on streaming platfo ...

, 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 (Moving Picture Experts Group, a video and audio industry group) and privately defined program-specific information originally defined by General Instrument for the DigiCipher 2 sys ...

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 as 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 fo ...

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. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

" (defines use of

Chinese character Chinese characters are logographs used to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represent the only on ...

s via

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

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/

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 ...

as well as MVC for 3D television) *A/76: " Programming Metadata Communication Protocol" (

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

-based PMCP maintains PSIP

metadata Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * 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 transmission of data over a wide area using radio waves. It typically refers to supplemental information sent by television stations alongside digital terrestrial television (DTT) signals. However, datacas ...

) *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 Standard" (TSFS is a special file system 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 systems. This contrasts with uploading, where data is ''sent to'' a remote s ...

computer file A computer file is a System resource, resource for recording Data (computing), data on a Computer data storage, computer storage device, primarily identified by its filename. Just as words can be written on paper, so too can data be written to a ...

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 informat ...

) *A/97: "Software Data Download Service" (used by UpdateTV 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 Software consists of computer programs that instruct the execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital computers in the mid-20th cen ...

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 tel ...

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 fra ...

lines, such as

closed captioning Closed captioning (CC) is the process of displaying text on a television, video screen, or other visual display to provide additional or interpretive information, where the viewer is given the choice of whether the text is displayed. Closed cap ...

and

teletext Teletext, or broadcast teletext, is a standard for displaying text and rudimentary graphics on suitably equipped television sets. Teletext sends data in the broadcast signal, hidden in the invisible vertical blanking interval area at the to ...

) *A/100: "DTV Application Software Environment - Level 1" (DASE-1) *A/101: " Advanced Common Application Platform" (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 operat ...

s) *A/112: E-VSB (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 broadcas ...

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, typically developed for that purpose. It includes service delivered via mobile phone networks, received free-to-air via terrestrial television stations, or via satel ...

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 coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of lossy video compression and lossy audio data compression methods ...

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 terrestrial television broadcasting created by the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC). The standards are designed to offer support for newer technologies, including High Effici ...

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 used in digital modulation for encoding digital (binary) data on multiple carrier frequencies. OFDM has developed into a popular scheme for ...

instead of

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

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

). 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 () is a German publicly-owned research organization with 76institutes spread throughout Germany, each focusing on different fields of applied science (as opposed to the Max Planck Society, which works primarily on basic sc ...

Qualcomm Qualcomm Incorporated () is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. It creates semiconductors, software and services related to wireless techn ...

and

Technicolor SA Vantiva SA (formerly Technicolor SA, Thomson SARL, Thomson SA, and Thomson Multimedia) is a French multinational corporation that provides technology products and services for the communication, media and entertainment industries. Headquarter ...

. 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, colloquially referred to as Vegas, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and the county seat of Clark County. The Las Vegas Valley metropolitan area is the largest within the greater Mojave Desert, and second-l ...

. 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 resolution#Resolutions, 4K UHD and 8K resolution#Resolutions, 8K UHD, which are two digital video formats with an ...

with High Definition and

standard-definition Standard-definition television (SDTV; also standard definition or SD) is a television system that uses a resolution that is not considered to be either high-definition television, high or enhanced definition. ''Standard'' refers to offering a ...

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, 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. It constitutes the southern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders North Korea along the Korean Demilitarized Zone, with the Yellow Sea to the west and t ...

) *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 ATSC standards MPEG Television lists Television technology