cable television (CATV)

CATV stands for Cable Television. In the early years of cable television, the abbreviation also stood for Community Antenna Television, a community antenna system for which, however, the English term Master Antenna Television( MATV) is used.

Technically, cable television is a cable distribution network for television reception. In terms of structure, it is a tree structure of a coaxial cable to which the individual end customers are connected. Transmission originates from the head-end station, into which the television and radio signals from the television satellites or those from terrestrial transmission are fed.

CATV networks can be used for coverage of individual residential areas to coverage of entire large cities and regions. The structure of a CATV network is hierarchical, the central point being the headend. This headend is used to feed in the programs and to communicate with the satellites and with other networks. Data is transported from the headend via the cable distribution network to the subscribers via the Cable Modem Termination System( CMTS). The maximum speed is 50 Mbit/s downstream and 10 Mbit/s upstream. Due to the problems in the last-mile area, cable distribution networks are becoming increasingly important for the access area and for city network operators. They can be used to implement low-cost Internet connections and telephone networks.

Analog and digital television and radio programs are fed into cable TV networks. The range of programs includes terrestrial analog and digital radio and television programs - e.g., DVB-T - as well as television and radio programs broadcast by satellite - e.g., DVB-S.