Provided are a Vestigial Side Band (VSB) digital television (DTV) receiver based on is A/53 of the Advanced Television System Committee (ATSC) that can secure backward compatibility of a low-ranked DTV receiver by using parity bytes added to robust data for error correction and obtain RS coding gain from the robust data, and a method thereof. The DTV receiver includes: a receiving unit for receiving a transmission signal including general data and robust data and converting the transmission signal into a base-band signal; an equalizer for determining a symbol level of the transmission signal; a trellis decoder for performing trellis decoding on a symbol of the determined level; a nonsystematic Reed Solomon (NRS) decoder for performing NRS decoding on the trellis-decoded robust data and correcting an error; and a restoring unit for restoring a digital video data stream with respect to the trellis-decoded general data and the NRS-decoded robust data.