DTV and HDTV....are not the same!

High Definition Television (HDTV) is actually a part of the Digital Television (DTV) family of formats, as defined by the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC). DTV uses digital data (1's and 0's) for transmission of the picture and sound information, as opposed to analog signals... (what we're all used to as analog television), devised by the National Television System Committee (NTSC). The relatively new DTV picture formats are generally characterized by the horizontal and vertical resolutions, aspect ratio, interlaced or progressive scanning, and refresh rate.

- There are actually 18 formats of Digital Television (DTV)!

- I'll try to explain this as simple as possible.

- First you have it divided down to 3 basic categories.

Standard Definition Television (SDTV)

SDTV consists of the first DTV format of 480i/30.  It is equivalent to interlaced video output of DVD-Video in 4:3 aspect ratio. So basically equivelant to DVD.

Here's where you can see how much better DTV is compared to analog! It's the first and lowest grade of signal but still starts off better than are old analog broadcasts!

Enhanced Definition Television (EDTV)

EDTV is a step up from SDTV, but not quite as good as HDTV.  EDTV consists of some 11 formats as shown in the table below.

High Definition Television (HDTV)

HDTV uses a data rate of 25 - 27 Mbps for the best possible picture.  All HDTV formats are in 16:9 aspect ratio.  The 720 vertical resolution only uses progressive scanning, but at various refresh rates.  The highest resolution is commonly used in interlaced scanning mode (1080i), due to limitations of current broadcast and consumer equipment.  But the format includes 1080p, to accommodate future growth as imaging and display technologies catches up.