[opendtv] Re: New Thread: What becomes of Legacy Analog Equipment

  • From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 07:47:27 -0500

At 5:03 PM -0800 11/25/07, John Willkie wrote:
I don't know of a way to indicate in advance in PSIP whether a program (event, actually) is broadcast in HD. TMS has that data available, but it's not necessarily a technical term, more like a marketing term.


I can think of several ways to indicate that a program is in HDTV.

The easiest would be to place something like HD or (H) at the beginning of the Event Description Field in the Master Guide. This would eat up a few of the characters available, but would be very easy to understand and to implement.

A more complex way to indicate that a program is in HD is to use the Extended Text Message table to provide more info about the event including whether it is HD, ED or SD.

For the long haul, I would suggest an amendment to A-69 to change the values for the Service_type descriptor.

The current values that are permissible for this field are:

* 1 denotes an NTSC analog service
* 2 denotes an ATSC full digital TV service including video, audio (if present) and data (if
present)
* 3 denotes an ATSC audio and data (if present) service
* 4 denotes a ATSC data service

After the analog stations are turned off, there will no longer bee a need for value #1.

We could change this to ATSC HD, or come up with additional values to denote other levels of source quality.

If we did not add any values it would probably NOT break existing receivers, although they might indicate NTSC if value 1 is used.

Regards
Craig


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