Advanced signal processing techniques are now being employed in the development of new television receivers. Such developments, termed ATV or advanced television techniques, include the concept of improved definition television, or IDTV, wherein the definition of the displayed image is enhanced by increasing the number of displayed lines over those present in the transmitted video signal. IDTV techniques become especially prominent in large screen sets where horizontal TV lines are discernable at normal viewing distances with present standards.
High definition television techniques, on the other hand, involve methods that require changes in the transmitted signal, such as doubling the number of transmitted lines, and a complete redesign of the receiver. As such, HDTV standards impose an increase in the bandwidth of each channel beyond the limit set by the FCC (6 Mhz for the US NTSC standard). The stringent requirement by the FCC to remain within the bounds of the specified channel Bandwidth has caused delays and partial solutions to the evolution of a world HDTV standard. One of the recommendations for HDTV requested by many European countries, for example, is to move away from interlaced scanning to progressive scanning. Since IDTV works with the existing standards to provide an enhanced definition image, it represents an interim solution until an HDTV standard is agreed upon, and may also be used with HDTV to further enhance large displays. Even in the case of IDTV, however, very large intermediate storage arrays and very high-speed processing may be required to achieve the requisite level of signal processing, particularly if the goal is a system that operates in real time. An outstanding need, therefore, is a method and specialized hardware for achieving the requirements of IDTV.