A Tutorial on Improved Systems for Color Television Transmission by Satellite

The NTSC color television svstem was developed 30 years ago. It was a brilliant technological achievement of which the United States television industry can be proud. The present state-of-the-art offers alternatives to frequency domain multiplexing of luminance and two chrominance signals carried by quadrature amplitude modulation within the video passband. For satellite transmission to millions of homes, the mismatch between the NTSC signal spectrum and the noise spectrum of the FM channel should cause alternatives to NTSC to be fully explored. Such an alternative is discussed and compared to NTSC for Direct Broadcasting via Satellite in the Ku-band. A time division multiplex of luminance and chrominance (analog) components is best suited to FM transmission. The artifacts of NTSC are eliminated by this new system. Its improved picture quality and its robustness has been demonstrated. This system also offers significantly improved picture quality in video recording.