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marioc89 · 12:40 PM

What do we suppose to do about Americans going digital at the beginning of next year? We're making a move when some people can't or don't have cable. Is this move to digital necessary or useless? Some one please explain to me.

ll Lando ll

This guy summed it up pretty well.

Why you'll get digital TV...like it or not

ih8bills · 03:44 AM

Originally Posted by marioc89

What do we suppose to do about Americans going digital at the beginning of next year? We're making a move when some people can't or don't have cable. Is this move to digital necessary or useless? Some one please explain to me.

Well it's basically about money... as is everything.
Broadcasters don't want to pay for 2 standards anymore... almost all cable & satellite systems are already digital.
Digital will be the next standard ....so they've decided that the time is now...(you still have a year--actually) Ananlog is obsolete-- sometimes you have to give people a little push towards someting before they realize "Hey! This is much better than the old way! We should have done this sooner"
they say it will allow for:

better-quality 'regular' TV signals
even more channels
and more hi-def choices

Those who don't have cable... will need a digital converter for their set-- the government is giving coupons to help buy these-- or they could buy a newer TV-- the newest models all have digital tuners built-in.

tractordriver88

Another reason for the change is to open up those frequency bands. With the developing technology out there, more frequencies are needed. Analog TV takes up a large amount of frequency space, and digital takes up a fairly small amount.

marioc89

Ok. Thanks for the explanation.

XiangDo

Actually, a digital over-the-air (OTA) TV channel has the same 6 megahertz width as an analog channel. Although more than one programming channel can be carried on a digital channel, there won't really be a saving of bandwidth. The ancillary program channels are almost always added services, not existing ones, so it doesn't result in less bandwidth usage than the previous analog-only system.

ih8bills · 05:22 PM

Originally Posted by XiangDo

Actually, a digital over-the-air (OTA) TV channel has the same 6 megahertz width as an analog channel. Although more than one programming channel can be carried on a digital channel, there won't really be a saving of bandwidth. The ancillary program channels are almost always added services, not existing ones, so it doesn't result in less bandwidth usage than the previous analog-only system.

I thought --with some new digital compression techniques... that they would be able to cram more data in ...?? I had seen something about this recently...

but as I said before-- everything is ultimately dollar-driven, in any case. You can bet that
something affects the "holy" bottom line