HDTV Receivers, Tuners

An ATSC tuner, often called an ATSC receiver or HDTV tuner, allows reception of ATSC digital television (DTV) signals broadcast over-the-air by TV stations in North America and South Korea. more...

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Such tuners may be integrated into the television, VCR, digital video recorder, and set-top box which provides audio/video output-connectors of various types.

Technical overview

The terms "tuner" and "receiver" are used loosely, and it is perhaps more appropriately called an ATSC receiver, with the tuner being part of the receiver (see Metonymy). The receiver generates the audio and video (AV) signals needed for television, and performs the following tasks: demodulation, error correction, transport stream demultiplexing, decompression, analog to digital conversion, AV synchronization, and media reformatting to match what is optimal input for one's TV. Examples of media reformatting include: interlace to progressive scan or vice versa, picture resolutions, aspect ratio conversions (16:9 to or from 4:3), frame rate conversion, even scaling. Zooming is an example of resolution change. It is commonly used to convert a low-resolution picture to a high-resolution display.

How an ATSC Tuner Works

An ATSC tuner works by generating audio and video signals that are picked up from over the air TV broadcasts. ATSC tuners provide the following functions: demodulation, transport stream demultiplexing, decompression, error correction, analog to digital conversion, AV synchronization and media reformatting to fit the specific type of TV screen optimally.

Demodulation

Demodulation means that the signal that is pulled off the airways is transformed into a usable signal that your TV set can use to display quality images and quality sound.

Transport Stream Demultiplexing

In the US, multiple digital signals are combined and then transmitted from one antenna source to create over the air broadcasts. An ATSC receiver then is able to decode the transport stream and display it on your TV set.

Decompression

Since digital signal that are broadcasted over the air are compressed (packed smaller), once they are received by the ATSC tuner, these compressed packets of digital data are then unpacked to their original size or using the proper term decompressed.

Error Correction

Error correction is a technology that is used by the ATSC tuner to make sure that any data that is missing can be corrected. For instance, sometimes interference or a poor quality signal will cause the loss of data information that the ATSC tuner receives, with error correction, the tuner has the ability to perform a number of checks and repair data so that a signal can be viewed on a TV set.

Read more at Wikipedia.org