Contribution level quality encoded high definition television signals. Typically split into two levels: high level at approximately 140 Mbps and low level at approximately 39 Mbps (for high definition with the studio, 270 Mbps is being considered). These levels of compression are necessary for signal routing and are easily re-encoded without additional compression artifacts (concatenation) to allow for picture manipulation after decoding. DS-3 at 44.736 will be used in both terrestrial and satellite program distribution.