The Service Multiplex

One of the goals in the current European work on digital television broadcasting is to achieve as much commonality as is practicable between system specifications for terrestrial, satellite and cable applications. It is already generally accepted that the MPEG-2 standard should provide the basis for common source coding across these applications. Modulation and channel coding, on the other hand, are likely to be application specific because of the very different properties of terrestrial, satellite and cable channels. Lying somewhere in the middle is the area of multiplexing. The prospect for a common approach to multiplexing across different media, and indeed between different regions of the world, has excited widespread interest. But what exactly is multiplexing, what features would a common system need to deliver to broadcasters and consumers, and is a common approach to multiplexing feasible?

Published

1994-01

Content type

Original Research

DOI

10.5594/M001281

ISBN

978-1-61482-945-4