Extended Data Services
Extended Data Services, is an American standard classified under Electronic Industries Alliance standard EIA-608 for the delivery of any ancillary data to be sent with an analog television program, or any other NTSC video signal.
XDS is used by TV stations, TV networks, and TV program syndication distributors in the US for several purposes.
Here are some of the most common uses of XDS:
- The "autoclock" system delivers time data via an XDS "Time-of-Day Packet" for automatically setting the clock of newer TVs & VCRs sold in the US. Most PBS stations provide this service.
- Rudimentary program information which can be displayed on-screen, such as the name and remaining time of the program,
- Station identification,
- V-chip content ratings data.
Many standard definition receivers produced by Dish Network encode XDS data into their output signal. Data encoded includes time of day, program name, program description, program time remaining, channel identification, and content rating. This data is obtained from the satellite service's EPG and replaces any data which may have been present when the signal was uplinked.
XDS uses the same line in the vertical blanking interval as closed captioning, and shares the available second video field bandwidth with the closed captioning channels CC3 and CC4, and with the text channels TXT3 and TXT4.
XDS information is used by TV commercial detection software to skip advertisements.