MPEGTS

MPEG Transport Stream (MPEG-TS) is a standard digital container format for transmission and storage of audio, video, and data. It is designed to support reliable delivery over imperfect networks and to multiplex multiple programs within a single stream, making it widely used for broadcast, streaming, and storage applications.

Structure: The fundamental unit is the 188-byte transport packet, which begins with a sync byte 0x47. Each packet has a 4-byte header and may be followed by an optional adaptation field and a payload. The adaptation field can carry timing and control information such as the Program Clock Reference (PCR). Packets carry either Packetized Elementary Stream (PES) data or Program Specific Information (PSI) tables. A transport stream can carry several programs; multiplexing is controlled by a PID system that identifies each stream.

PSI/SI and program layout: The PAT (PID 0x0000) identifies the programs in the stream and points to their corresponding PMT (Program Map Table) PIDs. PMTs declare the PIDs of the component streams (video, audio, subtitles) for that program. Additional tables such as NIT, SDT, and EIT convey network, service, and event information.

Standards and usage: MPEG-TS is defined by ISO/IEC 13818-1 (MPEG-2 Systems) and ITU-T H.222.0. It is a backbone of DVB, ATSC, and IPTV systems and can carry codecs such as MPEG-2, H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC, as well as audio codecs like AAC, MP2, and AC-3. Blu-ray Disc uses an MPEG-2 Transport Stream-derived container (M2TS) for some storage scenarios.

Notes: MPEG-TS is optimized for streaming and broadcast rather than file-based storage, and it supports clock recovery via PCR and timing-aware multiplexing across multiple elementary streams.