By Charles L. Dages, Jerrold Division General Instrument Corporation
Application of digital integrated circuit technology to consumer products is increasing at an explosive rate. The wide selection and phenomenal demand for electronically based entertainment devices indicates the beginning of the long awaited "Home Computer Revolution• is at hand. The General Instrument, Jerrold Division's PlayCable system addresses this new market segment with a unique offering of advanced home video services with capabilities eclipsing the European Teletext/ Antiope services. Specifically, the Playcable subscriber video terminal system will be demonstrated to efficiently provide a large variety of entertainment, education and information services, and will provide the subscriber with a useful software service. Technical details of the PlayCable CATV data transmission system are presented, highlighted by a headend computer system which will be the basis for a host of future CATV data services. The unique time/frequency division multiplexing scheme employed to transmit the service will be shown to be spectrally efficient and frequency agile.