Hello Baljit,

this reminds me of my thesis ...

CATV = Cable television

US, Canada and some european countries (UK, Belgium and others) had developed large cable based services towards houses.

I don't know the usage in other countries.

HFC = Hybrid Fiber Cable.

CATV cable operators started to implement hybrid infrastructure when the quality of optical components (lasers for TX and photodiodes for RX) became good enough to support the transport of the complex RF signal over fiber:

this allowed to extend the area served by an head end:

first branches are fiber based then a fiber to coaxial interface is implemented by simply receiving the optical power and using this signal to modulate the cable based distribution.

So you can think of

HFC = Fiber and Coaxial

CATV = cable television

cable operators are also able to offer internet services over the HFC using the so called cable modems.

Now, the last trend is IPTV based on IP and broadband access.

Hope to help

Giuseppe