Apparatus for deriving a compatible low-definition interlaced television signal and other components for restructuring the original signal from an interlaced high-definition television signal. The HDTV signal is divided into four component signals by horizontal and vertical low-pass and high-pass QMF filtering. For the vertical filtering, one field of a frame is filtered by an odd-length filter, the other field by an even-length filter. A time delay of one sample is introduced before the high-pass odd-length QMF filter. The component signals are each subsampled by a factor of two after filtering. The component signal covering the low-frequency horizontal and low-frequency vertical range is a reduced definition interlaced TV signal. To reconstruct the original HDTV signal, all four component signals are upsampled and filtered and a one sample delay is introduced following the low-frequency odd-length filter.