Optical Fiber: The 1990s Adaptive Television Transmission Medium

C. Robert Paulson

Within the “television industry,” a constantly increasing array of studio interface and recording standards for analog component, digital component and digital composite video signal waveforms now exists, supplementing the 1953 FCC-approved NTSC analog composite broadcasting standard. SMPTE 240-M is a studio interface standard for HDTV production and post-production. The “computer industry” is spawning its own array of standards for high resolution image generation. — There is an expanding demand for a terrestrial infrastructure of local and long haul fiber circuits to transmit these signals between and among a variety of unrelated business enterprise facilities. This demand in total comes from broadcasting and cable, plus business, financial, education, health care and government enterprises involved in distance learning, videoconferencing, advanced television (ATV, which includes HDTV) programming and new image transmission services. — However, the “telephone industry's” fiber infrastructure currently operates on its own hierarchy of digital standards for voice and data signal transmission. Terrestrial circuits for analog video transmission are scarce and costly. The demand for these urgently needed fiber transmission media will not become real, therefore, until the standards setters of the television and telephone industries begin to counsel together.

Print ISSN
Published
1990-01
Content type
Original Research
DOI
10.5594/J16800