What Are The Pros For Digital Television?
Written by Daniel Gibbs on January 19th, 2010The only difference between analog and digital TV is the way signal is transmitted. The video signal of analog television is transmitted in the same way as the radio signal. Actually, the video signal of analog television is AM, and audio is FM. The main drawback of analog TV is that because of the way signal is transmitted, interference can appear depending on meteorological conditions or geographic location of the TV.
The resolution and image quality are also restricted, because there are certain bandwidths assigned to analog TV channels. The analog signal is the United States follows the NTSC standard. This had been adopted in the 1940\’s, and served well since then, but nobody thought at that time that about color television. One major weakness of the NTSC standard is color implementation, so it is no wonder a lot of people call \”Never Twice The Same Color\” the NTSC standard.
Digital TV has quite a few advantages over analog signals. Digital signal is very much like computer data flow. There are two kinds of signal: 0, and 1, meaning \”on\” and \”off\”. The user sees the image or not. This is why in the digital era gradual signal loss and interference is unknown. And it doesn\’t matter how far away the transmitter is.
Unlike analog TV, digital format has been designed to be able to take all the main factors of television signal into consideration: B/W, color and audio can be transmitted as interlaced or progressive signal. This means the signal content has greater integrity and flexibility.
The same bandwidth an analog TV signals requires can host higher quality digital image and there will be even extra space left, which can be used for extra video, audio or texts signals.
Because of this, broadcasters can add a lot of extra features to their digital signals like surround sound, multiple language audio and text on the same bandwidth an analog TV signal requires. And there is one more difference to standard analog TV: digital television can transmit High Definition (HDTV) signal.
Unlike analog TV, digital technology is also able to broadcast programming in a true wide screen (16×9) format. This means the shape of the picture is very much like a movie screen, so the viewers can see a movie just as the director intended to be seen. Those who watch sports can see more action in one camera shot: it is possible to view the entire length of a football field without having the sensation that it is far away from the camera. The 16×9 format means there will be no more black bars on the top and the bottom of the wide screen image.
The United States made the transition to digital broadcasting on June 12, 2009. This means that all analog TV signals went off on that day. After this date, analog TV sets could be used only with an analog-to-digital converter connected to them. The preparations for transition from the analog to digital took quite some time for the consumers, broadcasters and authorities. The transition was originally planned for 2006, but authorities decided to postpone it because they thought consumers were not ready yet to embrace the new technology.
Edward is an electronics expert who writes HD TV reviews. To read more pioneer hdtv reviews, visit HDTVReviewLab.com