What is Reed-Solomon?
Reed-Solomon codecs (coder/decoders) are all about error correction. The maths behind RS codes was developed by Irving Reed and Gus Solomon back in 1959, hence the name. In recent years this type of coding has been used in many applications where data is transmitted and received. Examples include cellphones, digital TV broadcast, space communications and CD players. In fact any application where data is likely to be corrupted by noise or other error sources. Users are likely to be any company involved in wireless communications, communications or data transmission. RS codes are specified in many data transmission standards, e.g. the ATSC digital TV standard. RS codes provide extremely good error correction. It is one of the most effective forms of coding for errors that occur in a burst. For this reason they are often coupled with Viterbi codecs in a system. Viterbi (or convolution) coding is another type of error correction that is very good at random errors. RS is a block-code, i.e.
