Digital TV Transition
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Broadcast television in the United States will switch from analog transmission to all digital transmission on February 17, 2009. So if you currently receive your television signal off the air and your TV is strictly analog (no digital TV tuner), then you won’t be able to watch “American Idol” or any of your other favorite TV shows.
But no need to despair. There are solutions and most won’t cost you that much.
First, you may be asking why the switch if everything was working just fine all these years? The changeover to digital TV is being touted for the additional channels to be offered and the sound and video quality will be higher than analog TV. Advanced features such as multi-casting and interactivity will also be available and “ghosts” and “snow”, which has always plagued analog television transmissions, will be a thing of the past.
As nice as all this is, it’s not the true motive behind the switch to digital TV.
The plain fact is that analog broadcasting technology is a spectrum hog. In the space that an analog signal needs to hold the video portion plus the sound and finally the synchronization signals you can cram in a whole lot more digital channels. Analog TV transmission is a huge waste of space – plain and simple.
Once all this additional spectrum is freed up after February 17, 2009, then police and other emergency transmissions can take it over. The rest of it will be put up for auction by the US government so cellular companies can bid on it for more air wave space.
So even though some viewers will be inconvenienced a bit, the benefits to society as a whole will be significant.
In the mean time, you can either purchase a digital TV and be ready to hit the ground running the day the switchover to all digital TV takes place or you can apply for a voucher that will cover about half the price of a digital-to-analog converter box. Of course, you can always sign up for digital cable or satellite TV, which is already all digital.