Digital transmission will change the way television channels are allocated and will force broadcasters to master a new set of parameters for optimizing service coverage. This article discusses modulation and channel coding issues related to digital television terrestrial broadcasting (DTTB), such as data throughput, spectrum efficiency, single- and multicarrier modulations, interferences under simulcasting conditions, multilayer services, and DTTB coverage. Current advanced television (ATV) research for terrestrial broadcasting in the VHF/UHF bands is converging toward a fully digital implementation. In a digital ATV system, the digitized high definition video sources, with raw bit rate of up to l-Gb/s, are compressed using source coding techniques based on the discrete cosine transform (DCT) coding. The output data rate of the video source encoder, with present technology, is typically 15 to 20 Mb/s. This data rate is sufficient to provide a satisfactory distribution quality video service. >