Quality verification of digital TV signals in a production line environment

Production lines normally present a verification step, which is responsible for warning about defective devices. That step, in digital television (DTV) production lines, often includes a tuning and decoding check, which basically verifies if DTV devices are capable of presenting audio and video. However, poor signal conditions may cause unnecessary rejections, which happen due to very hostile environments. Based on that, the present paper proposes a verification methodology that reports poor signal conditions during tuning tests, with the goal of indicating that the associated check must be executed again. Tests, in a real environment, showed that the proposed approach is effective and efficient, while revealed that less than 40% of the obtained rejections, in a target production line, were indeed caused by hardware problems.