The evolution of digital television
has bought change in people's perception for tv viewing. Digital
tv replaced analog television that has been a useful and versatile form
of broadcasting for many decades. With the advancement in technology, the old
methods became obsolete, and then came the change in new digital format. Here
is a brief on how each format works that will help users understand why the change
is taking place.
How an Analog television works: Analog signals
broadcast on a frequency analogous to the information it is sending. The
antenna on your TV picks up those frequencies, and users could tune into a
specific frequency by changing the channel on TV. It provided a limited list of options, reason
being the analog signals took up a broader bandwidth (about 6 MHz per channel),
limiting the number of possible stations in any given area. With the invent of
cable tv, customers got additional options, but it still sent signals in the
same analog format.
How Digital TV Works: Digital TV
signals, on the other hand break the information down into a series of pulses,
each exactly of the same frequency and rate. A digital tuner then interprets
them as a binary code i.e, a series of 1s and 0s, which is the same way your
computer stores information. This allows digital signals to be much more
compact, and hence they take lesser space on the bandwidth.
Resolution: As digital TV
signals can hold more data as compared to the analog signals, the on-screen
image on a digital tv service is
sharper and crisper than that of a cable
tv. Digital TVs reflect image resolution as the number of horizontal
pixels that can fit on the screen.
Though there is an increased demand
for digital televisions these days, analog televisions need not to be thrown
out. Instead, you can use digital converter boxes that can interpret digital
signals into an analog format and beam it into your TV. Digital converter boxes
are very easy to set up and resemble a cable box in many ways. These boxes help
you change the channel instead of your TV and should be able to receive local
programming the same way you always did.
