ABSTRACT
When the possibility of digital transmission of television signals became apparent in the late 1980s, various efforts were started to define a new, worldwide set of standards for digital image capture, manipulation, storage, and distribution. The most well known of these were assembled under the auspices of the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG), a working group of the International Organization for Standards (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). At about the same time, work was underway on the practical aspects of high-definition television (HDTV) production and distribution, leading to an effort to develop an analog HDTV system. In the early 1990s, ongoing work based on the encryption of satellite transmissions made it viable to encode and transmit HDTV using a 6 MHz broadcast channel. These interrelated developments spawned the first serious efforts to define digital television systems for satellite, cable, and terrestrial media around the world.
