A novel cost-effective radio-over-fiber (ROF)/fiber-to-the-X (FTTX)/CATV hybrid three-band transport system based on direct modulation of a distributed feedback laser diode (DFB LD) with multi-wavelength output characteristic is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. Radio-frequency (RF) (1.25 Gbps/6 GHz) signal with direct modulation, as well as baseband (BB) (622 Mbps) and CATV (channels 2-78) signals with external remodulation are successfully transmitted simultaneously. Low bit error rate (BER) and clear eye diagram were achieved for ROF and FTTX applications; as well as good performances of carrier-to-noise ratio (CNR), composite second-order (CSO) and composite triple beat (CTB) were obtained for CATV signals over an 80-km single-mode fiber (SMF) transport.