D-MAC
Television broadcasting system
Among the family of MAC or Multiplexed Analogue Components systems for television broadcasting, D-MAC is a reduced bandwidth variant designed for transmission down cable.
- The data is duobinary coded with a data burst rate of 20.25 Mbit/s so that 0° as well as ±90° phasors are used.
- D-MAC has a bandwidth of 8.4 MHz versus 27 MHz for C-MAC.
- Most cable systems work on EBU 7 MHz channel spacing, so this approach did not work universally.
- D-MAC's bandwidth problems were later fixed by D2-MAC.
01D2-MAC: a fix for D-MAC
D-MAC consumed too much bandwidth for many applications, so D2-MAC was designed for European cable TV systems.
02Luminance and chrominance
MAC transmits luminance and chrominance data separately in time rather than separately in frequency (as other analog television formats do, such as composite video).
03Audio and scrambling (selective access)
04History and politics
MAC was developed by the UK's Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) and in 1982 was adopted as the transmission format for the UK's forthcoming direct broadcast satellite (DBS) television services (eventually provided by British Satellite Broadcasting). The following year MAC was adopted by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) as the standard for all DBS.
By 1986, despite there being two standards, D-MAC and D2-MAC, favoured by different countries in Europe, an EU Directive imposed MAC on the national DBS broadcasters, to provide a stepping stone from analogue PAL and Secam formats to the eventual high definition and digital television of the future, with European TV manufacturers in a privileged position to provide the equipment required.
However, the Astra satellite system was also starting up at this time (the first satellite, Astra 1A was launched in 1989) and that operated outside of the EU's MAC requirements, due to being a non-DBS satellite. Despite further pressure from the EU (including a further Directive originally intended to make MAC provision compulsory in TV sets, and a subsidy to broadcasters to use the MAC format), most broadcasters outside Scandinavia preferred the lower cost of PAL transmission and receiving equipment.
In the 2000s, the use of D-MAC and D2-MAC ceased when the satellite broadcasts of the channels concern changed to DVB-S format.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “D-MAC”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- PAL and D2-MAC Transmission.png by Uwe W., Public domain
- Multiplexed Analogue Components transmission (real signal).png by Zcooger, CC BY-SA 4.0
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