ATSC

Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) is an international, non-profit organization developing voluntary standards for digital television. ATSC was created to develop a system for over-the-air (terrestrial) broadcasting of digital television in the United States. The standard is also adopted by Argentina, Canada, South Korea and Taiwan.

The main characteristics of the ATSC system are:

• A single widescreen digital HDTV or up to 6 standard definition TV programs can be combined in a 6 MHz "analogue TV channel".
• Dolby surround sound (AC-3).
• Possibility for data broadcasting services.

The standard is based on reception of the signal by a fixed television set. The standard is not suitable for portable or mobile reception. The ATSC system can also be used for broadcast via satellite or cable.

Just as the originally European DVB system and the Japanese ISDB-T system is ATSC based on the transmission of MPEG-2 compressed video data containers. These data containers can be used to transmit a flexible mixture of compressed video, audio and other data services.

A difference is that ATSC does not make use of OFDM. The transmission is based on 8VSB modulation (or 16VSB on cable). 8VSB is a form of amplitude modulation with 8 different digital levels.