a) General term for proposed standards pertaining to consumer high-resolution TV.

b) An ATV term sometimes confused with HDEP. HDTV is usually used to describe advanced production and delivery mechanisms that will get ATV to the home. As HDEP cannot practically be broadcast, all broadcast HDTV schemes must make compromises in quality. The line between broadcast HDTV and EDTV, therefore, is difficult to define. See Minimum Performance.

c) A TV format capable of displaying on a wider screen (16x9) as opposed to the conventional 4x3) and at higher resolution. Rather than a single HDTV standard, the FCC has approved several different standards, allowing broadcasters to choose which to use. This means new TV sets will have to support all of them. All of the systems will be broadcast as component digital. d) By HDTV, we normally understand transmission, rendering, and display systems that feature about double the number of scanning lines, improved color quality, and less artifacts than that of today’s composite systems. The video may be analog, like the Japanese MUSE or the European HD-MAC, or digital, like the ATSC system in the USA. The European, MPEG-2 based Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) specifications embrace HDTV in addition to 625-line TV.

In the USA, the Grand Alliance has succeeded in combining various digital HDTV systems into the ATSC system a multiple format system based on MPEG-2 video coding that allows HDTV transmissions to use the same frequency bands now used by regular NTSC television. The Japanese, who have had regular analog HDTV transmission for some time, are also planning to implement digital HDTV.