A Quick Guide To Digital TV For 2010

As of June, 2009 all television stations in the United States were required to transition from analog signal transmission to digital tv signal transmission. The U. S. Decision to demand a switchover to digital television follows those of ten European nations, beginning with Luxembourg in 2006. It is expected that Japan, in 2011, will be the first Asian country to make the complete conversion to digital.

The law forcing U. S. Television stations to move from analog transmission to digital transmission was grounded primarily in its desire to make more bandwidth available to critical services like police and fire, and to improve television clarity, detail and sound. To a lesser extent, the government saw the possibility to generate revenue by auctioning off some of the spare bandwidth to the private sector.

To facilitate the conversion process the government addressed the need of those people who did not own a digital-ready television. It offered to those owners a coupon, worth up to forty dollars, which could be traded in for a digital converter box. Congress also stipulated that non-digital televisions could not be imported, nor could they be manufactured in the U. S. Retailers still selling analog television stock were required to prominently display at the point of sale a statement informing the customer that a converter box would be required for those sets.

The number of pixels displayed on the screen defines a television’s resolution. It is this attribute that provides the starkest contrast between analog and digital images. Whereas an analog image caps out at about 500 x 400 pixels(the number of discrete points on the screen), a digitally generated image can contain up to a whooping ten times that amount.

Only one channel can be assigned to a chunk of bandwidth in an analog transmission environment. This limits the program offerings of a television station. Stations transmitting digitally can now get around this restriction utilizing multicasting. With multicasting, a chunk of bandwidth can be sub-divided into multiple channels. The upshot then is that more program offerings are made available to the viewer.

Digital television provides the viewer with more operational and viewing freedom. Those subscribing to cable or satellite can benefit from interactive programming. Now movies-on-demand, and text messaging into live programming using the tv’s remote are possible. Fast-forwarding, pause, slow motion and rewind, not unlike operating a VCR, are also possible.

In today’s digital television environment there are now four types of television available to the consumer. Analog televisions(which require converter boxes), digital-ready sets which have a digital converter(or tuner) but suffer from low resolution, HDTV-ready units which provide high resolution but may not have a converter, and an integrated HDTV set which provides high resolution and a tuner. Budget and personal preference play heavily into which choice is made.

The government’s decision to usher in digital tv has had a profound effect. Improved picture quality, enhanced sound, and added features and functionality represent just the start of the digital television revolution. As the technology advances, expect to see even greater improvements.

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