SYSTEM FOR ENCODING BROADCAST QUALITY TELEVISION SIGNALS TO ENABLE TRANSMISSION AS AN EMBEDDED CODE

The invention provides a system of encoding broadcast-quality television signals to enable their transmission as a embedded code. A preferred embodiment provides a hybrid interpolative/predictive coding algorithm acting on all sampled sites of a television signal. One sub-set of samples are adaptively interpolatively coded; a 3-state interpolator switching signal is produced at each site, redundancy is removed and the signal transmitted. The interpolator switching signal also acts as a descriptor at sites surrounded each sample to be predicted. Adaptive prediction is used for the other sub-set of samples the particular predictor used at a sample site being determined by the surrounding descriptors.