How Digital TV Will Change Your Life

Digital TV, which stands for digital television, is a new system of telecommunication for receiving and broadcasting sound and video using digital signals. Traditional TV uses analog signals to transmit the information, but digital TV transmits the information as bits of data. Digital TV utilizes digital modulation data, and this data has been compressed digitally. To receive the signal and use it, the signal must be decoded. This is done with specially fitted TV sets, a personal computer that has been equipped with a television card, or a standard set top box receiver. This technology was introduced in the late nineties, and was viewed as offering new financial opportunities by the consumer electronics industry and the television broadcasting business. There are several advantages of digital TV over the older analog TV. Digital channels do not require as much bandwidth space, so the same amount of space will carry more digital signals than it will analog signals. This allows digital TV providers and broadcasters an opportunity to use the left over bandwidth to offer other services, like interactive TV, Internet access through digital TV, multimedia for pay services, and multicasting, which is the ability to carry more than one program on the same channel. Digital TV is technology that can offer great convenience to the consumer and the broadcaster. The federal government has initiated a requirement that requires any full power TV broadcast station to stop broadcasting analog signals at midnight on the date February 17, 2009. After this point broadcasts will only be in digital signal format. The reasoning behind this is that digital signals are a more efficient use of bandwidth. Digital TV has revolutionized the television viewing industry. The high quality picture and sound make digital TV a definite improvement over analog TV, and the services that are offered by digital TV are unparalleled.