3. Standards

All the standards mentioned in the following section are included in the list given in the annexed document Pour en savoir plus [Doc. TE 5 680].

After years of incompatibility between the first Japanese (1,035 active lines), American and European (1,152 active lines) HDTV standards, consensus was gradually reached on the Common Image Format (CIF) with 1920 × 1080 square pixels, followed by the Common Data Rate (CDR), enabling the same sampling frequency of 74.25 MHz to be used for luminance. This consensus had already been reached for the 16:9 aspect ratio, which replaced the original 5:3 ratio of Japanese HDTV developed by NHK.

CIF and CDR

The first HD format was NHK's 1125 lines (1035 active lines). This format already included 1920 pixels per line, but was not compatible with either 525 lines or 625 lines. In...