HDTV

HDTV is the acronym for High Definition Television.

What is High Definition Television?

A television system that provides a substantially higher image resolution than the previous generation of technologies, known as HD. The term has been used since 1936; more recently, it refers to the generation following standard-definition (SD) television, often abbreviated to HDTV or HD-TV. It is the current de facto standard video format used in most broadcasts: terrestrial broadcast television, cable television, satellite television, and Blu-ray Discs.

High-definition digital television was impossible with uncompressed video, which requires a bandwidth exceeding 1 Gbit/s for studio-quality HD digital video. Digital HDTV was made possible by developing discrete cosine transform (DCT) video compression. DCT coding is a lossy image compression technique first proposed by Nasir Ahmed in 1972 and was later adapted into a motion-compensated DCT algorithm for video coding standards such as the H. 26x formats from 1988 onwards and the MPEG formats from 1993 onwards.

There are two main types of HDTV: 720p and 1080p. 720p has a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels, while 1080p has a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. 720p is often referred to as standard HD, while 1080p is often referred to as full HD.

HDTV can be transmitted over various media, including cable, satellite, terrestrial broadcast, and Internet. It can also be played back on various devices, including Blu-ray players, set-top boxes, and computers.

• Abbreviation: HDTV