The MAC System

EE July/August 1987 An introduction into the characteristics of the television transmission format generally expected to become the follow-up of the by now technically outdated PAL and SECAM systems. The curious thing about the new Multiplexed Analogue Components (MAC) TV format is that everybody seems to be waiting for everybody else to start doing something about it. Workers in laboratories of most broadcasting authorities have long since established that MAC is superior in nearly every respect to PAL, SECAM, and certainly NTSC; they laid down the target technical character- istics, and conducted many experiments to verify the per- formance of MAC in satellite links and cable networks. Why then is MAC not being used at present, when it is such a powerful standard? Answering this question is not easy, and re- quires considering some as- pects not directly related to technical matters, our main con- cern here. To begin with, there is the evol- ution of the MAC standard to study-...