In this paper, a new approach for the characterization of M-channel finite impulse response (FIR) perfect reconstruction (PR) filterbanks is proposed. By appropriately restricting the eigenstructure of the polyphase matrix of the bank, a complete characterization of order-one polyphase matrices is obtained in which the polynomial part is in a block diagonal form. Nilpotent matrices play a crucial role in the structure. This structure allows imposing restrictions on the order of the inverse of the polyphase matrix and/or analysis-synthesis delay (reconstruction delay). Next, we derive an alternate complete characterization in terms of the degree of the determinant and the McMillan degree of order-one polyphase matrix, which we call the dyadi...