Patent ID: 7206352

Claim:
A digital signal transmission system comprising: a) means for generating a first Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) standard 8-Vestigal Side Band (8-VSB) bit stream; b) means for generating a new bit stream that transmits high priority information bits, said new bit stream and said standard 8-VSB bit stream being simultaneously transmitted over a fixed bandwidth communications channel to a receiver device, wherein a data rate of said standard bit stream is inversely related to a degree of robustness of information bits comprising said new bit-stream; c) a first Reed-Solomon encoder means for receiving a standard stream of bits and encoding said bit stream according to an ATSC 8-VSB standard; d) a hierarchical processing means for encoding a second bit stream of high priority information bits, wherein said second bit stream comprises a first portion of bits to be encoded as a robust ATSC bit stream and a second portion of bits to be encoded as a low priority embedded bit stream; and e) a packet multiplexer device having a first input coupled to an output of said first Reed-Solomon encoder means and having a second input coupled to an output of said hierarchical processing means, said multiplexer capable of multiplexing said standard stream and said second bit stream, wherein symbols of said new bit stream are transmitted according to a hierarchical VSB (H-VSB) symbol mapping technique.