Linking together (of systems). Although the effect on quality resulting from a signal passing through many systems has always been a concern, the use of a series of compressed digital video systems is, as yet, not well known. The matter is complicated by virtually all digital compression systems differing in some way from each other, hence the need to be aware of concatenation. For broadcast, the current NTSC and PAL analog compression systems will, more and more, operate alongside digital MPEG compression systems used for transmission and, possibly, in the studio.

Even the same brand and model of encoder may encode the same signal in a different manner.

See also: Mole technology..