ACATS - technical definition

(Advisory Committee on Advanced Television Service) The FCC committee that was formed in 1987 to recommend an advanced TV standard for the U.S. By 1991, ACATS had reduced the number of proposals from 23 to six, which included four all-digital HDTV specifications. By 1993, the digital proponents (AT&T, Philips, General Instrument, Thomson, MIT and Sarnoff Research) banded together as the "Grand Alliance" to create a single "Advanced TV" (ATV) standard.

ACATS worked closely with the ATSC (Advanced TV Systems Committee), a private organization founded in 1982. ATSC developed and documented the ATV specifications and was also responsible for including SDTV formats in the standard for compatibility with computers.

In late 1995, ACATS recommended the ATSC standard to the FCC, which adopted it on Christmas Eve 1996. ACATS later disbanded, but during its reign, more than a thousand people worked on the project. See ATSC and DTV.