Digital coding of progressively scanned HDTV signals with options for high-medium-basic quality level transmission

A European approach to high-definition television production envisages a hierarchical family of studio standards using progressive scanning on the highest level. The hierarchical coding scheme described is aimed at the delivery of the full potential of progressive scanning via broadband ISDN channels. It also provides access to image signals for three quality-level representations: improved present-day TV quality level with the widescreen format at 34 Mb/s, enhanced-definition quality level at 70 Mb/s, and high-definition quality level at 140-Mb/s. The philosophy behind the coding method was to gain an abstract type of subband coding, with the image information split up to form quality subbands (rather than frequency subbands), each higher subband carrying complementary information for the improvement of the lower quality representation of the image in terms of resolution, color rendition, motion portrayal, and signal-to-noise ratio