Digital TV

TV has gone digital. All encoding of TV transmissions prior to digital were called Analog. The encoding formats are simply different ways in which the electronic signals are packaged, sent, and received for your television. In the last half-decade technology has carried us to a digital world, and television has been swept along also.

Digital TV formats are capable of sending and receiving more information, at faster rates, than are analog methods. This means you can have clearer and larger pictures, truer colors, and cleaner sound. High definition digital tv (HDTV) is an even more powerful, clearer form of digital TV, but all digital tv is not HDTV. Though your current TV channels are all digital, only some stations are providing HDTV channels; Many major television networks now provide HDTV, but it is up to the local TV stations to decide which ones, if any, they then provide to you in HDTV.

Digital TV requires a different kind of receiver or tuner; analog tuners were a part of every TV set prior to a few years ago, but now every TV set is required to have a digital tuner. The ATSC tuner is required for every TV now produced in the US and most other countries, it is this tuner that receives 'over-the-air' transmissions from your local digital television provider. The QAM tuner is not a required device but is now almost standard equipment in all new TV's, and it is used for receiving digital television through a 'land-line' cable from your digital TV provider.

Most countries have made or are in the process of making a complete switch to digital TV; in the US, the switch was made completely by June of 2009; it had originally been scheduled for February but that was found to be too quick; over two million TV sets were suddenly unwatchable as they were not equipped to receive digital TV. The US congress passed the DTV Act (Digital Television Act) to allow more families, with the help of a government-sponsored coupon, to purchase a digital television receiver.

Other countries are close behind; Canada is scheduled to be completely digital by mid 2011; Japan for mid 2009 also, and the UK for sometime in 2012. Other countries are following suit, many of which are already entirely digital and many of which are aggresively making the switch. This changeover has many pros and cons; digital tv still has a few 'bugs' to work out, mainly in receiver technology and in bandwidth. Receivers can still be affected by interference or weak signals and give you 'artifacts' or strange pixels in your TV picture, or even large blocks of frozen or locked pixels; sometimes the entire picture can freeze up, and a weak signal can black out your screen. The more physical problems exist also; with the changeover from analog to digital, millions of analog tuners have either landed in landfills, or are stored and awaiting some kind of modification, retrofitting with digital converters.

But digital TV is here to stay, analog is a memory, so we can look forward to technology fine-tuning and expanding out digital TV experience.