The US Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory has patented an encoding algorithm that fits high-definition television signal into existing 6-MHz bands used by current TV broadcasters. It is based on compression technology invented by the lab for processing images of nuclear tests.

According to the EETimes, existing TVs can receive the signal and present it as conventional picture while HDTVs can decode the embedded information to render progressively scanned 1,280- x 720-pixel displays. Other proposed HDTV technologies produce signals that are unreadable by existing sets. The Los Alamos solution would negate the need for allocating new, wider channels to broadcasters and would do away with the problem of conversion to new transmission and reception technologies.

Read the source article at eetimes.com.