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Digital television
Digital television contains audio/visual signals that are broadcast over the air
in a digital rather than analog format. Recording digital TV is generally a
straightforward capture of the binary MPEG-2 data being received. No expensive
hardware is required to quantize and compress the signal (as the television
broadcaster has already done this in the studio). The MythTV DVR supports both
international DVB signals and American ATSC signals while the TiVo Series 3
supports only the ATSC signals. In the U.S., the FCC attempted to place a
road-block before digital DVRs with its "Broadcast flag" regulation. Digital
video recorders which had not won prior approval from the FCC for implementing
"effective" digital rights management would have been banned from interstate
commerce as of July 2005. The regulation was struck down on May 6, 2005.
DVD-based PVRs available on the market as of 2006 are not capable of capturing
the full range of the visual signal available with high definition television
(HDTV). This is largely because HDTV standards were finalized at a later time
than the standards for DVDs. However, DVD-based PVRs can still be used (albeit
at reduced visual quality) with HDTV since currently available HDTV sets also
have standard A/V connections.
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