By Brian James, Cable Television Laboratories, Inc.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) appointed the Advisory Committee on Advanced Television Service (ACATS) in 1987 to recommend a standard or standards for advanced television in the United States. The committee has developed criteria for the selection of the standard or standards, procedures for the testing of proposed systems to determine whether they will work as proposed and is presently in the middle of the laboratory evaluations of the proposed systems. The laboratory tests are expected to be completed by late summer or early fall of 1992. Follow-up field tests will occur in the winter of 1992/3.
This paper reviews the tests that have been utilized by Cable Television Laboratories, Inc. ( CableLabs) in performing the tests for the Advisory Committee. At the time this paper was being written the test results of the first systems had not been released by the committee but were expected to be public at the time of the NCTA convention.