THE HDTV BROADCAST STANDARD - SUBJECTIVE EVALUATION OF PROPONENT SYSTEMS

Six high-definition television (HDTV) systems were tested to establish a proposed HDTV terrestrial transmission standard. The tests occurred in two rounds and were conducted at the Advanced Television Test Cent er (ATTC); and at Cable Labs in Alexandria, VA; and at the Advanced Te levision Evaluation Laboratouy (ATEL) in Ottawa, Ont., Canada, The tes ting process played an important role in accelerating the development of HDTV technology in North America, culminating in the development of the digital Grand Alliance HDTV System, the adopted standard. This pa per summarizes the results of subjective image quality tests (Basic Re ceived Quality, Impairment/Interference, and Receiver Scan Conversion) of the proponent HDTV systems from both rounds of testing, thereby pe rmitting the reader to compare the relative performance of competing s ystems and gain some insight into the testing process conducted at ATE L.