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An ATSC receiver, often called an ATSC tuner, allows reception of digital television (DTV) signals broadcast over-the-air by TV stations in North America. Such tuners may be integrated into the television, or may be an external set-top box which provides audio/video output-connectors of various types.
Technical overview The terms "tuner" and "receiver" are used loosely, and it is perhaps more appropriately called an ATSC receiver, with the tuner being part of the receiver (see Metonymy). The receiver generates the audio and video (AV) signals needed for television, and performs the following tasks: demodulation, error correction, transport stream demultiplexing, decompression, analog to digital conversion, AV synchronization, and media reformatting to match what is optimal input for one's TV. Examples of media reformatting include: interlace to progressive scan or vice versa, picture resolutions, aspect ratio conversions (16:9 to or from 4:3), frame rate conversion. Zooming is an example of resolution change. Commonly used to convert a low resolution picture to a high resolution display. U.S Government mandates The FCC has issued the following mandates for devices entering the US • • •: Analog TV broadcast switch-off In 2005, the U.S. Senate passed a budget bill that calls for over-the-air television stations to cease their analog broadcasts by 2009-02-17 • (this cut-off date has been moved forward several times previously). Following that date, TVs and other equipment with legacy NTSC tuners would be unable to receive over-the-air broadcasts. This switch-off would cause tens of thousands of TVs to go dark and would cut off many lower-income viewers of their only source of television. A Congressional bill has authorized subsidizing converter boxes that would allow people to receive the new digital broadcasts on their old TVs. The current plan• is to make two $40 coupons available from 2008-01-01 through 2009-03-31 for each household that relies exclusively on over-the-air television reception. See also | ||||||||
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