Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction

1.Colour television: a review of current standards
Monochrome TV basics
Black and white compatible colour systems

2.Digitization of video signals
Why digitize video signals
Digitization formats
Transport problems

3. Source coding: compression of video and audio signals
Some general data compression principles
Compression applied to images: the discreet cosine transform (DCT)
Compression of fixed pictures
Compression of moving pictures (MPEG)
Compression of audio signals

4. Source multiplexing
Organization of the MPEG-1 multiplex: system layer
Organization of the MPEG-2 multiplex: program and transport streams

5. Scrambling and conditional access
Principles of the scrambling system in the DVB standard
Conditional access mechanisms
Main conditional access systems

6. Channel coding (forward error correction)
Energy dispersal (randomizing)
Reed-Soloman coding (outer coding)
Forney convolutional interleaving (temporal spreading of errors)
Convolutional coding (inner coding)

7. Modulation by digital signals
General discussion on the modulation of a carrier by digital signals
Quadrature modulations
Modulation characteristics for cable and satellite digital TV broadcasting (DVB-C and DVB-S)
OFDM modulation for terrestrial digital TV (DVB-T)
Summary of DVB transmission characteristics (cable, satellite, terrestrial)

8. Reception of digital TV signals
Global view of the transmission/reception process Composition of the integrated receiver decoder (IRD)

9. Middleware and interoperability aspects
Main proprietary middlewares used in Europe
The open European 'middlewares'

10. Evolution: state of the art and perspectives
Digital terrestrial television
Evolution of the set-top box
New architectures

Appendices
Appendix A: error detection and correction in digital transmissions
An error detecting code: the parity bit
Block error correction codes
Convolutional coding
Appendix B: spectral efficiency of cable and satellite transmissions with DVB parameters
Appendix C: reception of the digital TV channels of ASTRA and EUTESAT
Appendix D: the main other digital TV systems
The DSS system (satellite, USA)
The ATSC system (terrestrial, USA)
The ISDB-T system (terrestrial, Japan)
Appendix E: the IEEE1394 high speed serial AV interconnection bus
Appendix F: the DiSEqC bus for antenna system control
The DiSEqC levels
DiSEqC basic principles
Different fields of the DiSEqC message
Appendix G: the common interface (DVB-CI)
Appendix H: example chipset for DVB decoders

Glossary of abbreviations, words and expressions
Abbreviations
Words and expressions

Bibliography
Books
Official documents (in English)
Some useful Internet addresses

Index

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