By Israel (Sruki) Switzer, Cable Television Engineering
The American cable television system has been optimized for medium quality transmission of a very large number of television signals. It has been generally assumed that these cable systems would be ideal media for the distribution of high resolution, wide bandwidth images. This is not necessarily so. Present S/N of VSB/AM transmission of 525 line NTSC signals is barely adequate. The increased bandwidth of high resolution images implies reduced S/N in present cable systems. Bandwidth reduction techniques and/or improved noise immunity in new image transmission techniques will be required, as well as reduced cable system noise. FM video transmission, with or without improved color encoding techniques, is proposed as the best means of providing high quality transmission of 525 line video.