A technique used in many ATV schemes (including all of the MACs) for squeezing a signal of a certain duration into a time period of lesser duration. This effectively multiplies the bandwidth of the original signal by the compression factor. If the higher bandwidth is not available, horizontal resolution is lost. Time compression is most frequently used for colour components (which can often afford the resolution loss due to restricted visual acuity) and for widescreen panels (with the resolution loss made up via some sub-channel).