A question for TV experts

[Joe Wicked]

Originally Posted by 727pilot@usa.co

You guys are confusing two issues here.

Digital TV is what the stations will be broadcasting over the air. It may or may not be Hi Definition. A lot of stations, particularly the public service ones, have been broadcasting digital for some time. Many of these are not High Definition.

So, yes, you will need a converter box to get from digital to analog TV.

Yep, I tried to simplify it. The signal is still analog. No one has figured out how to transmit a digital signal over anything other than a very short distance and that requires a lot of power to accomplish. The old "analog" system uses an analog carrier frequency that has been modulated with an analog signal that is easily decoded. The new "Digital" system uses an analog carrier frequency that has been modulated by a digital signal that requires more advanced decoding. The advantages to the analog system are ease and cost. The disadvantages are the quality of the signal each station must use a different frequency. The advantages of the digital system are picture quality, and you can have different stations on the same frequency broadcast, but encoded differently. The decoder can read the coding as 2 separate channels. The biggest disadvantage is it does cost a lot more for the equipment on the broadcast side and more coding and decoding equipment is needed.

If you are on Satellite you are already using a digitally encoded signal. Almost all Cell Phones also use this same principal. It is not a new technology, but the cost has kept it away from the public for the last 50ish years. US Navy first used a digitally encoded signal on Radar equipment in the 40s shortly after WWII ended.