Aspects of Testing in Modern Television Systems

In the past 50 years, methods of testing television systems have progressed from the use of general purpose oscilloscopes to a well-defined set of measurements using television-specific instruments. Introduction of digital techniques into the traditional analog television system, over the past 15 years, has increased the range of specifications to he evaluated but has not changed the basic testing paradigm for video, indirect measurement using test signals. Although there are many useful compression algorithms, MPEG-2 appears to be the most universal, along with its widely accepted system definition for the transmission of additional data encountered in multimedia applications. Introduction of practical video compression techniques has added a whole new dimension to video measurement methods, the need for instruments to directly measure picture quality. The MPEG-2 transport stream, with its small packets, was developed for transmission systems and can be used to carry all types of data. This paper outlines a layered model for systems and testing analogous to the open systems interconnection (OSI) model for communications systems. Methods of picture quality measurement are discussed followed by a description of the MPEG-2 transport stream and test methods for its analysis and generation.

Print ISSN

0036-1682

Published

1997-07

Content type

Original Research

DOI

10.5594/J15746