Digital Video Broadcasting Is Big Business and Growing Fast. Thanks to Compression Technologies, Broadcasters Can Deliver Unprecedented Quantities of Programmes and Services to the Home. but How Do Broadcasters Ensure Continuous Quality in a Digital Transmission Environment?

delivery systems. In the USA, ATSC (advanced television systems committee) transmissions serve the nation’s terrestrial receivers. Underpinning these diverse systems, the key technology that exploits scarce bandwidth is the Motion Picture Expert Group’s MPEG-2 compression system (Reference 1). Thanks to MPEG-2 compression, broadcasters can pack as many as 18 digital satellite channels into the bandwidth that one analogue channel requires (Reference 2). With broadcasters such as BSkyB due to discontinue analogue transmissions in 2002, it’s now difficult to see how analogue systems will survive this decade. As well as the promised diversity in programming, DTV promises consumers vastly improved picture and sound quality. Digital techniques consign such analogue transmission problems such as “noisy” pictures, colour imbalance, and