IDTV is different from HDTV in that it uses the standard transmitted (M) NTSC or (B, D, G, H, I) PAL signal.

IDTV improves the display of these signals by doing further processing of the signal before displaying it. IDTV offers picture quality substantially improved over conventional receivers, for signals originated in standard 525-line or 625-line format, by processing that involves the use of field store and/or frame store (memory) techniques at the receiver. One example is the use of field or frame memory to implement de-interlacing at the receiver in order to reduce interline twitter compared to that of an interlaced display. IDTV techniques are implemented entirely at the receiver and involve no change to picture origination equipment and no change to emission standards.