Once upon a time, television engineers only had to contend with composite 525 line interlaced NTSC analog video. Now broadcasters are faced with digital and analog interlaced and progressive scan component video. Plus Intraframe and interframe digital compression formats abound. Today, video production and broadcast transmission flourishes with a myriad of video technologies which challenge the most experienced broadcast engineers. This paper will provide a practical insight into video interfaces and will provide a practical "how to" guide for the quality optimization of the video broadcast plant. Issues addressed will include the understanding proper NTSC to Component Digital interfacing, practical SDI test and measurement techniques, digital video quality assessment and optimization of MPEG-2 encoding.