ATSC Approves Recommended Practice for DTV Receivers

The Advanced Television Systems Committee approved recommended practices that establish voluntary guidelines for broadcast digital television (DTV) receiver performance.

"These important guidelines are the result if a collaborative effort of broadcasters, consumer electronics manufacturers, semiconductor manufacturers, and other ATSC members," said ATSC President Mark Richer. "Our successful completion of this work meets our commitment to the FCC, which suggested that the industry develop voluntary DTV receiver standards."

The ATSC document provides performance guidelines for receiver sensitivity, multiple signal overload, phase noise, selectivity and multipath. For example, sensitivity is recommended to be held to a transport stream bit-error rate of no worse than 3x10-6. Phase noise level tolerance would be set at a threshold of visibility (TOV) of -80dBc/Hz at a 20kHz offset from signal source. Accommodation of more than one undesired high-level received NTSC and ATSC signal is recommended, as well as several parameters for multipath interference, and the inclusion of the EIA/CEA-909 smart-antenna interface standard. Guidelines for implementation of received signal quality indicators for use by consumers are also included. The Receiver Performance Guideline Recommended Practice A/74 document is available at www.atsc.org.