Gazette Notice SMBR-002-06

Department of Industry

Radiocommunication Act

Notice No. SMBR-002-06 – Adoption of the ATSC A/65 Standard for Digital Television (DTV) Broadcasting in Canada

Notice is hereby given that Industry Canada is adopting the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) A/65 standard for terrestrial Digital TV (DTV) broadcasting services in Canada.

ATSC A/65 entitled Program and Systems Information Protocol for Terrestrial Broadcast and Cable provides a standard for System Information (SI) and Program Guide (PG) data that is compatible with digitally multiplexed bit streams constructed in accordance with ISO/IEC 13818-1 (MPEG-2 Systems). This document defines the standard protocol for transmission of the relevant data contained within packets carried in the transport stream. The protocol defined herein is referred to as Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP).

The PSIP identifies the television channel number, informs the receiver whether multiple program channels are being broadcast and also identifies closed-captioning and V-chip information. Failure to properly include encoded PSIP data in DTV signals may result in false identification and tuning at the TV receiver.

The adoption of this standard will allow the deployment of a flexible and high-quality digital television service in Canada.

Obtaining Copies

Copies of this notice and documents referred herein are available electronically on the Spectrum Management and Telecommunications website at: http://strategis.gc.ca/spectrum.

Official printed copies of Canada Gazette notices can be obtained from the Canada Gazette website at: http://canadagazette.gc.ca/publication-e.html or by calling the sales counter of Canadian Government Publishing at (819) 941-5995 or 1 800 635-7943.

The ATSC A/65 Standard (Rev. C) is available for download at the ATSC website: http://www.atsc.org.

June 3, 2006

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R.W. McCaughern
Director General
Spectrum Engineering Branch