GI develops DTV transcoder: unit lets cable systems carry digital broadcast signals; will be available in '98. (General Instrument; TCD-1000 digital television transcoder)

Broadcasting & Cable, July, 1997 by Dickson, Glen

General Instrument is developing a headend product that will allow cable operators to remodulate broadcast DTV signals for carriage on their systems. The unit, called the TCD-1000, is an 8-VSB (Vestigial Side Band) to QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) transcoder that demodulates 8-VSB digital broadcast signals so they can be converted to the QAM modulation (64 or 256) scheme used in digital cable plants.

GI says the transcoder will be compatible with its NextLevel MPEG-2 digital cable equipment and should be available by year-end 1998. By using the transcoder, cable operators could either interleave broadcast standard-definition (SDTV) signals into their existing digital NTSC lineup or use 256 QAM modulation to carry two HDTV signals within one 6...

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