HDTV - High Definition Television
Hungarian HDTV
HDTV landscape in Europe
Spectrum issues and business opportunities
Planned launch of HD programs in Europe
What is HDTV?
High Definition Television (HDTV) services offer the viewers a significantly enhanced television experience. These new services currently considered the next-generation of television services, they are gaining momentum around the world and are expected soon to become the norm for television viewing.
HDTV services offer notably higher picture quality than the traditional ‘standard definition’ television (SDTV) services. Instead of providing an image with 576 active lines, as is the case of ‘625 line’ SDTV in Europe, HDTV provides an image with a format of either 720 or 1080 active lines on the screen. Motion portrayal may also be better than traditional SDTV depending on the whether the active lines form a progressively scanned picture fifty times a second, rather than a complete interlaced image twenty five times a second. HDTV is also always formatted as 16:9, which is a better picture ratio for the human eye.
To transmit the increased amount of data necessary to adequately carry the more detailed images, HD services require more bit rate capacity than SDTV ones. Greater bit rate capacity translates effectively into more frequency spectrum requirement. Hence, the satellite platform, which has a relatively ‘limitless’ supply of spectrum, was the first platform to be able to offer such services.
Source of the HDTV pages (except the Hungarian landscape part): DigiTAG, HD on DTT