Prioritization and transport in the ADTV digital simulcast system

A technical overview of the prioritization and transport in the advanced digital television system (ADTV) is provided. ADTV incorporates an efficient MPEG-compatible compression algorithm at its central core, with application-specific data prioritization and transport features added as separable layers. The compression process is based on a 1440*960 HDTV format, producing a selectable bit-rate in the region of 15-20 Mb/s. The data prioritization layer of ADTV achieves robust delivery over an appropriate two-tier modem by separating compressed video data into high- and standard-priority bit-streams with appropriate bit-rates. These prioritized data are then formatted into fixed-length cells with appropriate data-link-level and service-specific adaptation-level headers.< >