Compatible High Definition Television Broadcast Systems

This paper describes NTSC compatible HIDTV systems with incremental improvement potential. The systems are capable of increased horizontal and vertical resolution, reduced crosstalk between the components, and a wide aspect ratio. Experimental results on a split-luminance system show that 600 lines of horizontal resolution are achieved after the luminance signal band has been divided at the encoder and recombined at the decoder. Spatial splitting of the picture is employed to increase the aspect ratio. A low cost HDTV system is also presented that uses a modulated-signal combination. With this system, considerable simplification is possible with a slight reduction in resolution. All proposed systems are fully NTSC compatible and utilize two standard 6 MHz channels for transmission. The improvements can be realized incrementally because of their downward compatibility at the receiver.