Advanced TV Systems Committee (ATSC) members are expected to vote...
Advanced TV Systems Committee (ATSC) members are expected to vote this spring on adopting a new enhanced VSB extension (E-VSB), said a Zenith spokesman, whose company developed the original 8-VSB technology. The ATSC’s 178 members originally had been expected…
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to vote via paper ballot this year, but the process was delayed to study how E-VSB would work with MPEG-4 video compression. E-VSB was designed to be more robust than the original 8-VSB, boosting signal strength so it was received more easily by indoor antennas. The ATSC had been expected to set an E-VSB standard in spring 2002, but the process slowed as Zenith and NxtWave Communications moved to combine competing VSB technologies. If ATSC membership votes to adopt E-VSB in the spring, the first products containing it aren’t likely to hit the market until 2006, the Zenith spokesman said. E-VSB alters, but doesn’t replace, VSB by slowing the data rate to 14-15 Mbps so the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) decreases to the 9.5-11 dB range from 15 dB.