persia wrote:
What happens in 2009 when the US abandons NTSC for ATSC? Or the PAL world becomes the DVB-T world? How long will PAL and NTSC be supported before they drop them from the TVs all together?
I don't know about ATSC, but I've seen DVB-T and it is so much better than PAL that it won't be long before people switch once movies are available in it.
You are confusing standards..
NTSC is a transmission and the coding standard. ATSC is a transmission standard. That use mpeg2 coding.
Same for PAL, it's a transmission and coding standard. DVB-T is a transmission standard.
And movies will not be available in DVB/ATSC, just as they won't be available in FM, QPSK, QAM etc.. They will be available in mpeg2 which is used by.. DVD discs.
So TV sets will likely come with DVB-T/ATSC antenna input. But the connector of interest is the
DVI/HDMI one. Maybe analog VGA will hang along for a while but don't count on it.
So it's really: DVB/ATSC -> Receiver -> DVI/HDMI -> Display
So any future proofing focus better aim at DVI as any HDMI connector on the display will be backwards compatible.
HDMI allows digital audio interleaved with video aswell.
And it's at least in theory possible to drive a DVI/HDMI connector with Spartan-3E mode "LVDS_25".