GLOSSARY OF TERMS
DVB-T2 the Digital Video Broadcasting
standard that defines modulation and error
correction in terrestrial transmissions. MPEG-2
is used as the transport stream.
EPG - Electronic Programme Guide – a
service that displays detailed information
about current and future programmes on the
television screen.
FTA - Free-to-air – uuencoded radio and
television channels that may be received on
any television set.
STB - Set-top box – an electronic device
connected to the television set, which
processes the signal received from the
ground-based, cable or network satellite
antenna. It enables the playback of video and
sound.
HD (High Definition) - Used to describe
video content that is in one of the high
definition video formats. These are broadly
720i/p and 1080i/p. The 720 or 1080 refers to
the number of horizontal lines used to define
the picture and the “i” and “p” refer to
“interlaced” or “progressive scan”. Ordinary,
“SD / Standard Definition” TV used 576 lines
(PAL standard).
Full-HD - HD television standard for 1080p
quality video, with 1080 horizontal lines.
HD Ready - HD television standard for 720p
quality video, with 720 horizontal lines.
Aspect ratio: The ratio of vertical and
horizontal sizes of a displayed image. The
horizontal vs. vertical ratio of conventional
TVs is 4:3, and that of widescreens is 16:9.
JPEG: A very common digital still picture
format. A still-picture data compression
system proposed by the Joint Photographic
Expert Group, which features small decrease
in image quality in spite of its high
compression ratio.
XviD: MPEG-4 based video compression
technology, that can shrink digital video to
sizes small enough to be transported over the
internet, while maintaining high visual quality.
H.264: is a next-generation video
compression format. H.264 is also known as
MPEG-4 AVC. Developed for use in high
definition systems such as HDTV, Blu-ray as
well as low resolution portable devices, H.264
offers better quality at lower file sizes than
both MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 ASP (DivX or XviD).
H.264 is sometimes referred (erroneously) as
x264 – x264 is the name of a popular
freeware encoder for the H.264 format. H.264
is also sometimes referred to as MP4, again
this is technically incorrect. MP4 is a container
format much like AVI or MKV and it can be
used to “house” many different types of
compression codecs, not just H.264.
Container. The multimedia container file is
used to identify and interleave different data
types. Simpler container formats can contain
different types of audio codecs, while more
advanced container formats can support
multiple audio and video streams, subtitles,
chapter-information, and meta-data (tags) —
along with the synchronization information
needed to play back the various streams
together. There are many container formats,
such as AVI, Matroska (MKV), MOV, MP4,
OGM, WAV, etc.
PCM (Pulse Code Modulation): A system
for converting analog sound signal to digital
signal for later processing, with no data
compression used in conversion.
S/PDIF - Format for carrying audio digitally
over either optical (TOSLINK) or electrical
(Coaxial) cable. Can carry high quality DTS or
Dolby Digital audio.
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