You wanna know how great DTV is? Hook up an antenna to your digital television and start receiving over-the-air digital programming. Better yet, hook up your HD Ready television and start enjoying HD broadcasts – for FREE.
How does it work?
Digital channels are broadcast over-the-air from local facilities. That means you don’t necessarily need cable or satellite to get HD broadcasts. In fact, over-the-air broadcasting has never been better. Here is a bit of history.
The old days of Analog TV
Most people associate high quality television images with their cable or satellite company. That’s because before cable (which preceded satellite in all but the most remote areas) people used antennas to tune-in to channels. More often than not, the channels were blurry, snowy, and intermittent. Cable made watching television so much more pleasurable. You no longer had to stand with the antenna over your head to see a clear signal.
Along comes DTV
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Digital television (DTV) is a telecommunication system that transmits signals digitally. And, what is convenient is that the digital signals take up less bandwidth than the analog signals. So broadcasters are able to split channels into several signals, allowing for several “formats” of the same channel to be broadcast. For example, “Channel 7”, can also have other channels associated with it like “Channel 7-1”, “Channel 7-2”, etc. The gain in bandwidth can also allow multi-casting, which is the ability to transmit several different programs within the same space.
HDTV and HD Radio
HDTV, along with HD Radio(which is actually just digital radio) are the obvious evolutions of the ability to transmit digital signals. I bring up HD Radio because it is important to note that HD Radio is getting much more hype than over-the-air HDTV ever did. This is because of the threat of satellite radio dominating the radio market. On the television side however, consumers are already hooked on cable and satellite subscriptions, and bets are that those service providers would like it to stay that way.
HDTV for free?
Yes. And, in this case it isn’t “You get what you pay for.” If you took a look at over-the-air programming you would be amazed at the quality. It makes regular (non-HD) broadcasts from cable and satellite look like signals from the 70’s.
Tune in later this week to learn how you can get HDTV for free.
